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Number 412. 



Published by HxVRPER <fc BROTHERS, New York. 



Price 20 Cts. 



Entered at the Jbst-ojfice at JWie York aa Second-class Mail Matter. 



A HISTORY 



OF 



THE FOUR GEORGES 



PART I. 

By justin McCarthy, 



OCT 25 10 



MCCARTHY'S HISTORICAL WORKS. 



HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES 



A History of Our Own Times, from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880. By Justin 
McCarthy, M.P. In Two Volumes. 4to, Paper, 20 cents each ; 12mo, Cloth, $1 25 each ; Half Calf, $3 00 each. 



Will unquestionably occupy and maintain a very high place in litera- 
ture of a very high order. It is scarcely an anticipation of the universal 
verdict on these pages to describe it as a rare achievement of literary 
workmanship. * * * Animated without flashiness or flippancy, careful and 
methodical without superfluity of detail, picturesque without vulgar glare, 
thoughtful and reflective without sermonizing, full without prolixity, and 
concise without conceit, he carries the charmed reader with him as on a 



clear and sparkling stream, not only without effort, but with a constant 
satisfaction and enjoyment. He is especially happy in his portraits. 
These are drawn with a vigorous touch, an easy grace, and a penetrating 
insight into character, which leave upon the reader at once an impression 
of life-like fidelity of likeness and of a hand as incapable of flattery as 
of malice. Certain of these portraits will become classical. — Daily News, 
London. 



SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES 

A Short History of Our Own Times, from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the General Election of 1880. By Justin 
McCarthy, M.P. 4to, Paper, 25 cents; 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

It is brilliant without being flashy, easy without being careless, and ac- The work combines in a rare degree the literary skill and the vividness 

curate without being dry. It is as readable as a novel, and probably it of a well-told romance, with the accuracy of a careful history. It is as 

has been more read than most of the romances of the day. — Daily News, diverting and as easy to read as a good novel, and its movement is as 

London. rapid as its tone is sure. Nowhere else in the same space can be found 

His histories are even more charming than his fiction is. — iV. Y. half so good or so clear an account of the leading incidents of the Vic- 

World. toriau reign. — Boston Journal. 



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SYDNEY. A Novel. By Gkorgiana M. Craik 

LETTERS OF MADAME DE RfiMDSAT 

THE BLACK SPECK. A Temperance Tale. By P. W. Robinson 

RESEDA. A Novel. By Mrs. Randolph 

WARLOCK O' GLENWARLOCK. A Novel. By George Maodonald 

WITH COSTS. A Novel, liv Mrs. Newman 15 

THE PRIVATE SECRETARY. A Novel 20 

THE CAMEKONIANS. A Novel. I'.v James Grant 20 

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POETRY OF BYRON. Choseu and Arranged by Matthew Arnold... 20 

IVY: COUSIN AND BRIDE. A Novel. By Frboy Greg 20 

A LIFE'S ATONEMENT. A Novel. By David Christie Murray 20 

THE BRAES OF YARROW. A Romance. By Charles Guidon 20 

THE MYSTERIES OF HERON DYKE. A Novel of Incident 20 

CHRISTOWELL. A Dartmoor Tale. By K. U. Bun n 20 

THE COMET OF A SEASON. A Novel. By Jdstin McCarthy 20 

A LAODICEAN. A Tale of To-day. Bv Thomas IIaedv. Two Ill's... 20 

A GRAPE FROM A THORN. A Novel. By James Payn 20 

GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI. By J. Theodore Bent, B. A., Oxon. Hid.... 20 

SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. By Lnoi Phii.limors. Two Illustrations 20 

THE QUESTION OF CAIN. A Novel. liv Mrs. Cabiiei. Hoev 20 

CIVIL SERVICE IN GREAT BRITAIN. Bv Dokman 11 Eaton 25 

THE CAPTAINS' ROOM. A Novel. By Walter Besant and James Rioe 10 
THE DICKENS READER. Character Readings from the stories of 

1 >i i'ki-tis. Selected hy Nathan Siikptauh. Illustrated.. 25 

THE SENIOR PARTNER. A Novel. Bv Mrs. ,1 11. Kidlell 20 

A HEART'S PROBLEM. A Novel. By Charles Gibbon 10 

GOD AND THE MAN. A Novel. Bv "Robert Buchanan 20 

MARRIAGES OF THE BONAPARTES. By the Hon. D. A. Bjnoham. . 20 

AMERICA: A HISTORY By Roiiibi Mackenzie 20 

MEMOIRS OF PRINCE M UTTER N loll. 1H30-1835. Part ( 20 

ONE MAY DAY. A Novel. By Miss Grant 20 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM 1760 TO 

I860 By Ciiaui.es Dunn Yonoe, M.A 25 

THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. By John Riouard Gbeen 20 

AMONG THE RUINS. AND OTHER STORIES. By Mary Cecil Hav 16 

HESPEROTHEN; Notes from the West. By W. Howard Russell, LL.D. 20 

A Novel ' 



LOVE THE DEBT. A Novel. By Bash 20 

BEGGAR MY NEIGHBOR. A Novel. By E. D. Gerard 20 

MEMORIES OF OLD FRIENDS Being Extracts from the Journals and 

Letters of Caroline Fox. of Penjerrick, Cornwall : 1835 tol8Tl 20 

ToM BROWN'S SCHOOL-DAYS. Illustrated 10 

TILL DEATH US DO PART. A Novel. By Mrs. J. K. SPENDER 20 

THE FIXED PERIOD. A Novel. Bv Anthony Troi.i.ope 15 

EXCHANGE NO ROBBERY. A Novel. BvM. Betham-Ei.vv AB..S. lll'd. 15 

PLAIN SPEAKING. By Miss Mi look 15 

DOROTHY'S VENTURE. A Novel. By M abv Cboii. Hay 15 

FOR CASH only. A Novel. By Jambs Payn 20 

DOCTOR L'ESTKANGE. A Novel. By ANNETTE LystisR 20 

THOMAS CARI.YLE. By J. A. Fbodde, M.A. Illustrated. Vol.] 15 

THOMAS CARLYLE. Bv .1. A. Fkouiik. M.A. Illustrated. Vol. II.... 15 

THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA A Novel. By Joseph Hatton 15 

WHY FKAU FL'OHMANN RAISED HER 'PRICES, AND OTHER 

STORIES. By Anthony Thollope 10 

MOUNT ROYAL. A Novel. By Miss M. E. Beaddon 15 

MARION FAY. A Novel. Bv Anthony Trollops. Illustrated 20 

two old cats. ANovel. By Virginia W. Johnson 15 

SERMONS ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS. By Akthdb Penbhyn Stanley 20 

OUR SET: A COLLECTION OF STORIES. By Annie Thomas 16 

THREE VOLS. OF "ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS." MILTON. By 

M. Pattwon POPE. By L. Stephen.— COWPER. Bv G. Smith 

GERALDINE AND HER SUITORS. ANovel. By M. CM. Simpson. 

AMABEL. A Novel. Bv Mrs Elizabeth Wobmei.ey Latimer 

REMINISCENCES OF MY IRISH .JOURNEY. Bv Thomas CARLYLE. 

MAR.loRY. A Study. By the Author of " James Gordon's Wife." 

LADY JANE. A Novel. Bv Mrs. OlIPHANT 

THE " LADY MAUD." ANovel. By W. Clark Russell. Illustrated 
"SO THEY WERE M Alt i;i ED ■' By Besant and K.or. Illustrated.. 

A Model FATHER. ANovel. ByD.C Murray 

UNKNOWN TO HISTORY. A Story. By Charlotte M. Yonoe 

MY WATCH BELOW. ByW.Ci.ARE Rdsseli 

THE MINISTER'S SON. ANovel. By M. C. Stirling 20 

FORTUNE'S MARRIAGE. ANovel. By Qeobsiana M. Craik 20 

EGYPT UNDER ITS KHEDIVES. By Edwin De Leon 20 

8INGLEHEART AND DOUBLEFACE, &c. By Chari.es Reade. Ill'd 16 

'THE KNIGHTS OF THE HORSESHOE By Dr. Wm. A. C* RS .. 20 

A STRANGE JOURNEY; or, PICTURES PROM EGYPT AND 'THE 

sol DAN. Bv tlie Author of "Commonplace," " Poems," &c, 16 

SELF-HELP. By Sam pel Smiles 20 

KEPT IN THE DARK. ANovel. By Anthony Troi.lopb 15 

A SHORT HISTORY OF IRELAND. By C. G. Walpole 25 

WEIGHED AND WANTING. A Novel. By George Maodonald 20 

RTON 'TOWEL'S ANovel By Annir Thomas 20 

an ADVENTURE IN TUPLE. A Story for Young People 10 

ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN. By Besant and Rice.... 20 

RACHEL'S INHERITANCE. ANovel. By Margaret Veley 20 

Daisies AND BUTTERCUPS. A Novel. By Mrs. J. H. Riddeli 20 

OF HIGH DEGREE. A Story. By Charles Gibbon 20 

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF MARY RUSSELL MITFORD 25 

'THE GREAT DIAMONDS OF THE WORLD 20 

FLOWER AND WEED. ..Novel. Bv M. E. Beaddon 10 

No PROOF. ANovel. Bv Aliok 0'Hani.on 20 

QUITS AT LAST: An Account in Seven Items. By R. E. Fbanoillon 15 

VAL STRANGE. A Story of the Primrose Way. By D. C. MoitBAY . . . . 20 

THE GOLDEN SHAFT. ANovel. By Charles Gibbon 20 

KIT: A MEMORY. ANovel By James Path. Illustrated 20 

GABRIELLE DE BOURDAINE. "ANovel. By Mrs. John K. Spender 20 

DUKESBOROUGH TALUS Bv Rioiiaei. M alooi.m Johnston. Ill'd... 25 

GEORGE VANBRUGH'S MISTAKE. ANovel. By H. Baden Pritohard 20 

MY CONN AUGHT COUSINS. A Novel 16 

CHARACTER READINGS PROM "GEORGE ELIOT." Illustrated.. 25 

IT WAS A LOVER AND HIS LASS. A Novel. Bv Mrs. Olipuant.. 20 

BID ME DISCOURSE. ANovel. Bv Mary Cecil Hay 10 

JAMES AND PHILIP VAN ARTEVELD. By James H in ton 20 

SHAN DON BELTS. ANovel. By William Black. Illustrated 80 

UNSPOTTED FROM 'THE WORLD. ANovel. BvMrs.G.W.G key 20 

James NASMYTH, ENGINEER Edited by Samuel Smiles 20 

who is SYLVIA? ANovel, By A. Price 20 

THE WRECK OF THE "GROSVENOB ANovel. By W. C. Russell 15 

WHY WE LAUGH. BvS.S. Cox. .. ' 25 

DAISY MILLER. AND OTHER STORIES. By Henry JaMES, Jr 25 

THE HANDS OF JUSTICE. ANovel. By F.W. Robinson 20 

STRAY PEARLS. ANovel. By C. M. Yonoe 15 

THE STORY OF MELICENT. ANovel. Bv Fate Madoo 10 



CENTS. 

307. LETTERS AND MEMORIALS OF JANE WELSH CARLYLE.. 30 

3()S. MARY BARTON. A Tale of Manchester Life. By Mrs. Qabkrll. 20 

309. NO NEW 'THING. ANovel. By W. E. Noreis 25 

310. LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA. ANovel. By Mrs. F. E. Trollops. . 20 

311. AN OUTLINE OF IRISH HISTORY. By Justin H. MoCarthy 15 

::12. THE REAL LORD BYRON. By J. C. Jeaefreson "0 

313. THE LADIES LINDORES. ANovel. By Mrs. Olipuant 20 

314. A SEA QUEEN. ANovel. By W. Clark Russell 20 

SIS. MONGRELS. ANovel. By T. Wilton... 20 

310.' HONEST DAVIE. ANovel. By Frank Barrett 20 

317. MR. SCARBOROUGH'S FAMILY. ANovel. By Antuony Troi.lopb.. 20 

318. ARDEN. ANovel. By A. Mary F. Robinson 15 

319. YOLANDE. ANovel. By William Blaok. Illustrated 20 

320. FREDERICK II. AND MARIA THERESA. By Deo de Bkoglie . . . . 20 
381. THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. By Conamt and SoHim.EE. Illustrated. 20 
:;22. ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A MILKMAID. By Tuos. Hardy. 111. 10 

ALT CESAR AUT NIHIL. ANovel. By Countess M. Von Botiimek. 20 

THE SENIOR SONGMAN. ANovel. By the Author of " St. Olaves" 20 

A FOOLISH VIRGIN. ANovel By Ella Weed 20 

WHAT HAST THOU DONE? ANovel. By J. Fitzgerald Molloy . . 15 



SIR TOM. ANovel. By Mrs Olipuant. .. . 20 

ROBERT REID, COTTON -SPINNER. ANovel. By Alice O'Hanlon 20 



320 DISARMED. ANovel. By Miss Betham-EdwaRDB.. 15 



332. 
333. 
334. 
335. 
336. 
337. 
33S. 
339. 
340. 



20 
20 
15 
25 

20 



330. ALTIORA PETO. A Novel. By Laurence Olipuant 

331. THICKER 'THAN WATER. A Novel. By James Payn 

BY THE GATE OF THE SEA. A Novel. By David Christie Murray 

THE NEW TIMOTHY. A Novel. By Rev. William M. Baker 

PE ARLA. A Novel. By Miss 11. Bktham-Edwakiis 

DONAL GRANT. ANovel. By George Maodonald 20 

PHANTOM FORTUNE. ANovel. By M. E. Braddon 20 

A STRUGGLE FOR FAME. ANovel. By Mrs. . J. H. Riddeli 20 

DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL. By the Rev. William M. Taylor, D.D... 25 

HEARTS. ANovel. By David Christie Murray 20 

A BOOK OF SIBYLS. By Miss Thackeray 15 

341. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. By Anthony Tboi.i.ope 20 

342. ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR.' A Novel. By Walter Besant 20 

343. A NOBLE WIFE. ANovel. By John Saunders 20 

344. UNDER THE RED FLAIL ANovel By Mi.-s Beaddon 10 

345. MAID OF ATHENS. ANovel. Bv Justin McCarthy 20 

1146. ION E STEWART. ANovel. Bv E. Lynn Linton 20 

347. ADRIAN BRIGHT. ANovel. By Mis.Cai.hy 20 

348. A GREAT HEIRESS. ANovel. By R. E. Fbanoillon 15 

349. JENIFER. ANovel. By Annie Thomas 20 

350. ANNAN WATER. A Romance. Bv Robert Buchanan 20 

351. AN APRIL DAY. A Novel. By Philippa Peittie Jkphson 15 

362. THE LIFE OF LORD LYTTON. Part I. Autobiography 20 

S53. ROUND THE GALLEY FIRE. By W. Clark Ri nsm.i 15 

854 'THE LIFE OF LOUD LYTTON. Part II. Biography ' 20 

355. THE MILLIONAIRE. A Novel ". 20 

366. THIRLBY HALL. ANovel. By W. E. Norris. Illustrated by W. Small 25 

35T. THE CANON'S WARD. ANovel. By James Payn. Illustrated 25 

358. ONE FALSE, BOTH FAIR. ANovel. By John B. H aewood 20 

351). HESTER. ANovel. By Mrs. Olipuant 20 

360. LITTLE LOO. A Novel. By W. Clark Rubseli 20 

361. SUSAN DRUMMOND. ANovel. By Mrs. J. II. Riddei.l 20 

362. THE NEW ABELARD. A Romance. By Robert Buchanan 15 

363. PRETTY MISS NEVILLE. ANovel. ByB. M.Ceokee 20 

364. RED RIDING-HOOD. ANovel. By Fanny E. M. Noti.ey 20 

365. A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. By Justin McCarthy.. 25 
306. MORE LEAVES FROM, QUEEN VICTORIA'S JOURNAL 15 

367. THE WIZARD'S SON. ANovel. By Mrs. Olipuant 25 

368. A REAL QUEEN. ANovel. By R. E. Fbanoillon 20 

360 MR. NOBODY. ANovel. By Mrs. J. K. Spendkb 20 

370. VIRGINIA COOKERY BOOK. Compiled by Mary Stuart Smith 25 

371 THE PIRATE, and THE THREE CUTTERS. Bv Captain Mabryat... 16 

372. JACK'S COURTSHIP. ANovel. Bv W. Clark Russell 25 

373. AN OLD MAN'S LOVE. ANovel. "By Anthony Trollope 15 

374. GOOD STORIES. By Charles Reade. Illustrated 20 

370. THE MAN SHE CARED FOR. ANovel. Bv F. W. Robinson 20 

376. THE WAY OF THE WORLD. A Novel. By David Christie Mdrray. 20 

377. CHINESE GORDON. By Archibald Forbes. Illustrated 20 

37s "TOMMY UPMORE." ANovel. By It. D. Blaokmore 20 

379. JOHN IIOLDSWoRTH, CHIEF MATE. ANovel. Bv W. Clark Russell 20 

380. IN THE WEST COUNTRIE. ANovel. By May Ceommelin 

881. A FAIR COUNTRY MAID. A Novel. Bv E. Fairfax Byrrne 

352. GODFREY HELSTONE. ANovel. By Georoiana M. Craik 

353. MY DUCATS AND MY DAUGHTER. ANovel 

384. A PERILOUS SECRET. ANovel. Bv Charles Reade 

"I SAY' NO." ANovel. By Wilkie Collins 

LUCIA, HUGH, AND ANOTHER. A Novel. By Mrs. J. U. Ni edei.l 

VENUS'S DOVES. A Novel. By Ida Ashwortii Taylor 

LANCELOT WARD. M. P. A Love Story. By George Temple.. . . 

A FAIR MAID. ANovel. By F. W. Rohinbon 20 

MATRIMONY. ANovel. By W. E. Norris 20 

GEORGIA SCENES. Illustrated 20 

392. CURIOSITIES OF THE SEARCH-ROOM 20 

393. STORMONTIPS ENGLISH DICTION ARY — PRONOUNCING, ETY- 

MOLOGICAL, AND EXPLANATORY-EMBRACING SCIENTIFIC, 
FAMILIAR, AND OTHER TERMS, AND MANY OLD ENGLISH 
WORDS. Bv Rev. James Stormontii. Parti 

394. WOMEN ARE STRANGE, &c. By Frbderiok W. Robinson 

395. STORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY. Part II 

396. THE COURT OF 'THE TUILER1ES. Bv Lady Jackson 

3S>7. STORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY'. Part III 25 

398. FRANK FA1RLEG1I. ANovel. By Frank E. Smiuley 20 

399. STORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY Pan IV 25 

HACO THE DREAMER. ANovel By William Sime 15 

STORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY. Part V 25 

BETWEEN THE HEATHER AND THE NORTHERN SEA. A Novel. 

By M. Linskill 20 

403. STORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY. Part VI 25 

404. JUDITH SHAKESPEARE. ANovel. By William Black 20 

405. STORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY. Part VII 25 

tin'.. JOY. ANovel. By May Ceommelin 20 

407. BTORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY'. Part VIII 

ins. 'THE ART OF LIFE AND THE LIFE OF ART. By Ai.stt. F. Oakey. 

Illustrated 

409. A NORTH COUNTRY MAID. A Novel, l f Mrs. II. LoVETT Cameron. 

410. STORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY'. Part IX 

411. MITCH ELI ll'RST PLACE. A Novel. By Margaret Vki.ky 

412. A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES Parti. By Justin McCarthy 
US STORMONTH'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY. Part X 



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387. 
388. 
389. 

3'.l(l 

391. 



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A HISTORY 

OF 



THE FOUR GEORGES. 



By justin McCarthy, 

AUTHOR OP " A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES," &c. 



CHAPTER I. 

" MORE, ALAS ! THAN THE QUEEN'S LIFE !" 

"The Queen is pretty well," Swift wrote to Lord Peter- 
borough on May 18, 1714, "at present, but the least dis- 
order she has puts all in alarm." Swift goes on to tell 
his correspondent that " when it is over we act as if she 
were immortal ; neither is it possible to persuade people 
to make any preparations against an evil day." Yet on 
the condition of Queen Anne's health depended to all ap- 
pearance the continuance of peace in England. While 
Anne was sinking down to death, rival claimants were 
planning to seize the throne ; rival statesmen and rival 
parties were plotting, intriguing, sending emissaries, mov- 
ing troops, organizing armies, for a great struggle. Queen 
Anne had reigned for little more than twelve years. She 
succeeded William the Third on March 8, 1702, and at 
the time when Swift wrote the words we have quoted, 
her reign was drawing rapidly to a close. 

Anne was not a woman of great capacity or of elevated 
moral tone. She was moral, indeed, in the narrow and 
more limited sense which the word has lately come to 
have among us. She always observed decorum and pro- 
priety herself ; she always discouraged vice in others ; 
but she had no idea of political morality or of high polit- 
ical purpose, and she had allowed herself to be made the 
instrument of one faction or another, according as one old 
woman or the other prevailed over her passing mood. 
While she was governed by the Duchess of Marlborough, 
the Duke of Marlborough and his party had the ascend- 
ant. When Mrs. Masham succeeded in establishing her- 
self as chief favorite, the Duke of Marlborough and his 
followers went down. Burnet, in his " History of My 
Own Times," says of Queen Anne, that she " is easy of 
access, and hears everything very gently ; but opens her- 
self to so few, and is so cold and general in her answers, 
that people soon find that the chief application is to be 



made to her ministers and favorites, who, in their turns, 
have an entire credit and full power with her. She has 
laid down the splendor of a court too much, and eats pri- 
vately ; so that, except on Sundays, and a few hours twice 
or thrice a week, at night, in the drawing-room, she ap- 
pears so little that her court is, as it were, abandoned." 
Although Anne lived during the Augustan Age of English 
literature, she had no literary capacity or taste. Kneller's 
portrait of the Queen gives her a face rather agreeable 
and intelligent than otherwise— a round, full face, with 
ruddy complexion and dark-brown hair. A courtly bi- 
ographer, commenting on this portrait, takes occasion to 
observe that Anne "was so universally beloved that her 
death was more sincerely lamented than that of perhaps 
any other monarch who ever sat on the throne of these 
realms." A curious comment on that affection and devo- 
tion of the English people to Queen Anne is supplied by 
the fact which Lord Stanhope mentions, that " the funds 
rose considerably on the first tidings of her danger, and 
fell again on a report of her recovery." 

England watched with the greatest anxiety the latest 
days of Queen Anne's life ; not out of any deep concern for 
the Queen herself, but simply because of the knowledge 
that with her death must come a crisis and might come a 
revolution. Who was to snatch the crown as it fell from 
Queen Anne's dying head ? Over at Herrenhausen, in 
Hanover, was one claimant to the throne ; flitting between 
Lorraine and St. Germains was another. Here, at home, 
in the Queen's very council-chamber, round the Queen's 
dying bed, were the English heads of the rival parties ca- 
balling against each other, some of them deceiving Han- 
over, some of them deceiving James Stuart, and more than 
one, it must be confessed, deceiving at the same moment 
Hanoverians and Stuarts alike. Anne had no children 
living ; she had borne to her husband, the feeble and color- 
less George of Denmark, a great many children — eighteen 
or nineteen it is said — but most of them died in their very 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



infancy, and none lived to maturity. No succession there- 
fore could take place, bul only an accession, and at such a 
crisis in the history of England any deviation from the 
direct line 71111st bring peril with it. At the time when 
Queen Anne lay dying, it might have meant a new revo- 
lution ami another civil war. 

While Anne lies on that which is soon to be her death- 
bed, let us take a glance at the rival claimants of her crown, 
and the leading English statesmen who were partisans on 
this side or on that, or who were still hesitating aboul the 
Bide it would be, on the whole, most prudent ami profita- 
ble to choose. 

The English Parliament had taken steps, immediately 
after the Revolution of loss, to prevent a restoration of 
the Stuart dynasty. The Bill of Rights, passed in the 
first year of the reign of William and Mary, declared that 
the crown of England should pass in the first instance to 
the heirs of Mary, then to the Princess Anne, her sister, 
ami to the heirs 'of the Princess Anne, and after that to 
the heirs, if any, of William by any subsequent marriage. 
Mary, however, died childless ; William was sinking into 
years, and in miserable health, apparently only waiting 
and anxious for death, and it was clear that he would not 
marry again. The only one of Anne's many children who 
approached maturity, the Duke of Gloucester, died just 
after his eleventh birthday. The little duke was a pupil 
of Bishop Burnet, and was a child of great promise. 
Readers of fiction will remember that Henry Esmond, in 
Thackeray's novel, is described as having obtained sonic 
distinction in his academical course, "his Latin poem on 
the ' Death of the Duke of Gloucester,' Princess Anne 
of Denmark's son, having gained him a medal and intro- 
duced him to the society of the University wits." After 
the death of this poor child it was thought necessary that 
some new steps should he taken to cut off the chances of 
the Stuarts. The Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, ex- 
cluded the sons or successors of James the Second, and 
all other Catholic claimants, from the throne of England, 
and entailed the crown on the Eleetress Sophia of Han- 
over as the nearest, Protestant heir, in case neither the 
reigning king nor the Princess Anne should have issue. 
The Eleetress Sophia was the mother of George, after- 
wards the First of England. She seems to have had good- 
sense as well as talent ; her close friend Leibnitz once said 
of her that she was not only given to asking why, but 
also wanted to know the why of the whys. She was not 
very anxious to see her son George made sovereign of 
England, and appeared to he under the impression that 
his training and temper would not allow him to govern 
with a due regard for the notions of constitutional lib- 
erty which prevailed even then among Englishmen. It 
even seems that .Sophia made the suggestion that James 
Stuart, the Old Pretender, as he has since been called, 
would do well to become a Protestant, go in for consti- 
tutional Government, anil thus have a chance of the Eng- 
lish throne. It is certain that she strongly objected to 
his being compared with Perkin Warbeck, or called a 
bastard. She accepted, however, the position offered to 
her and her son by the Act of Settlement, and appears to 
have become gradually reconciled to it, and even, as she 
sank into years, is said to have expressed a hope many 
times that the name of Queen of England might be in- 
scribed upon her coffin. She came very near to the grati- 
fication of her wi^h. She died ill June, 1714, being then 
in her eighty-fourth year — only a very few days before 
Queen Anne received her first warning of the near ap- 
proach of death. Her son George succeeded to her claim 
upon tin 1 crown of England. 

The reigning house of Hanover was one of those lucky 
families which appear to have what may be called a gilt 
of inheritance. There are some such houses among Eu- 
ropean sovereignties; whenever there is a breach in the 
continuity of succession anywhere, one or other of them 
is -nre to come in for the inheritance. George the Elec- 



tor, who was now waiting to become King of England as 
soon as the breath should be out of Anne's body, belonged 
to the House of Guelf, or Wolf, said to have been founded 
by Guelf, the son of Isembert, a count of Altdorf, and 
Irmintrude, sister of Charlemagne, early in the ninth cen- 
tury. It had two branches, which were united in the 
eleventh century by the marriage of one of the Guelf 
ladies to Albert Azzo the Second, Lord of Este and Mar- 
quis of Italy. His son Guelf obtained the Bavarian pos- 
sessions of his wife's step-father, a Guelf of Bavaria. One 
of his descendants, called Henry the Lion, married Maud, 
daughter of Henry the Second of England, and became 
the founder of the family of Brunswick. War and im- 
perial favor and imperial displeasure interfered during 
many generations with the integrity of the Duchy of 
Brunswick, and the Electorate of Hanover was made up 
for the most part out of territories which Brunswick had 
once owned. The Emperor Leopold constructed it for- 
mally into an Electorate in 1692, with Ernest Augustus 
of Brunswick-Liincbcrg as its first Elector. The George 
Louis who now, in 1714, is waiting to become King of 
England, was the son of Ernest Augustus and of Sophia, 
youngest daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, 
sister to Charles First of England. Elizabeth had married 
Frederick, the Elector-Palatine of the Rhine, and her life 
was crossed and thwarted by the opening of the Thirty 
Years' War, and then by the misfortunes of her brother 
Charles and his dynasty. Elizabeth survived the English 
troubles and saw the Restoration, and came to live in 
England, and to see her nephew, Charles the Second, reign 
as king. She barely saw this. Two years after the Res- 
toration she dii'd in London. Sophia was her twelfth 
child : she had thirteen in all. One of Sophia's elder 
brothers was Prince Rupert — that " Rupert of the Rhine" 
of whom Macaulay's ballad says that " Rupert never conies 
but to conquer or to die" — the Rupert whose daring and 
irresistible charges generally won his half of the bat- 
tle, only that the other half might be lost, and that his 
success might be swallowed up in the ruin of his com- 
panions. His headlong bravery was a misfortune rather 
than an advantage to his cause, and there seems to have 
been one instance — that of the surrender of Bristol — in 
which that bravery deserted him for the moment. We 
set' him afterwards in the pages of Pepys, an uninterest- 
ing, prosaic, pedantic figure, usefully employed in scien- 
tific experiments, and with all the gilt washed off him by 
time and years and the commonplace wear and tear of 
routine life. 

George inherited none of the accomplishments of his 
mother. His father was a man of some talent and force 
of character, but he cared nothing for books or education 
of any kind, and George was allowed to revel in ignorance. 
He had no particular merit except a certain easy good- 
nature, which rendered him unwilling to do harm or to 
give pain to any one, unless some interest of his own 
should make it convenient. His neglected and unre- 
strained youth was abandoned to license and to profli- 
gacy. He was married in the twenty-second year of his 
age, against his own inclination, to the Princess Sophia 
Dorothea of Zell, who was some six years younger. The 
marriage was merely a political one, formed with the 
object of uniting the whole of the Duchy of Llineberg. 
George was attached to another girl ; the princess is 
supposed to have fixed her affections upon another man. 
They were married, however, on November 21, 1GS2, and 
during all her life Sophia Dorothea had to put up with 
the neglect, the contempt, and afterwards the cruelty of 
her husband. George's strongest taste was for ugly 
women. One of his favorites, Mademoiselle Sehulem- 
berg, maid of honor to his mother, and who was after- 
wards made Duchess of Kendal, was conspicuous, even 
in the unlovely Hanoverian court, for the awkwardness 
of her long, gaunt, thshless figure. Another favorite of 
I George's, Madame Kilmansegge, afterwards made Count- 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



ess of Darlington, representee! a different style of beauty. 
She is described by Horace Walpole as having "large, 
fierce, black eyes,rolling beneath lofty-arched eyebrows, 
two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck 
that overflowed and was not distinguishable from the 
lower part of her bod}-, and no portion of which was re- 
strained by stays." 

It would not be surprising if the neglected Sophia 
Dorothea should have looked for love elsewhere, or at 
least should not have been strict enough in repelling it 
when it offered itself. Philip Christof KBnigsmark, a 
Swedish soldier of fortune, was supposed to be her fa- 
vored lover. He suffered for his amour, and it was said 
that his death came by the special order — one version has 
it by the very hand — of George the Fleet or, the owner 
of the ladies Schulemberg and Kilmansegge. Sophia 
Dorothea was banished for the rest of her life to the Cas- 
tle of Ahlden, on the river Aller. In the old schloss of 
Hanover the spot is still shown, outside the door of the 
Hall of Knights, which tradition has fixed upon as the 
spot where the assassination of Konigsmark took place. 

The KOnigsmarks were in their way a famous family. 
The elder brother was the Charles John Konigsmark 
celebrated in an English State trial as the man who 
planned and helped to carry out the murder of Thomas 
Thymic. Thomas Thynne, of Longleat, the accused of 
Titus Oates, the "Wise Issaehar," the "wealthy Western 
friend" of Dryden, the comrade of Monmouth, the "Tom 
of Ten Thousand," of every one, was betrothed to Eliza- 
beth, the child widow — she was only fifteen years old — 
of Lord Ogle. Konigsmark, fresh from love-making j n 
all the courts of Europe, and from righting anything and 
everything from the Turk at Tangiers to the wild bulls 
of Madrid, seems to have fallen in love with Thynne's 
betrothed wife, and to have thought that the best way of 
obtaining her was to murder his rival. The murder was 
done, and its story is recorded in clumsy bas-relief over 
Thynne's tomb in Westminster Abbey. Kdnigsmark's ac- 
complices were executed, but Konigsmark got off, and 
died years later fighting for the Venetians at the siege 
of classic Argos. The soldier in Virgil falls on a foreign 
field, and, dying, remembers sweet Argos. The elder 
Konigsmark, dying before sweet Argos, ought of right 
to remember that spot where St. Albans Street, joins Pall 
Mall, and where Thynne was done to death. The Konigs- 
marks had a sister, the beautiful Aurora, who was mis- 
tress of Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony, and so 
mother of the famous Maurice de Saxe, and ancestress 
of George Sand. Later, like the fair sinner of some tale 
of chivalry, she ended her days in pious retirement, as 
prioress of the Protestant Abbey at Quedlinburg. 

George was born in Osnabriick, in May, 1660, and was 
therefore now in his fifty-fifth year. As his first quali- 
fication for the government of England, it may be men- 
tioned that he did not understand one sentence of the 
English language, was ignorant of English ways, history, 
and traditions, and had as little sympathy with the grow- 
ing sentiments of the majority of educated English peo- 
ple as if he had been an Amurath succeeding an Amurath. 

When George became Elector, on the death of his 
father in 1698, he showed, however, some capacity for 
improvement, under the influence of the new responsibil- 
ity imposed upon him by his station. His private life 
diil not amend, but his public conduct acquired a certain 
solidity and consistency which was not to have been ex- 
pected from his previous mode of living. One of his 
merits was not likely to he by any means a merit in the 
eyes of the English people, lie was, to do him justice, 
deeply attached to his native country. He had all the 
love for Hanover that the cat has for the hearth to which 
it is accustomed. The ways of the place suited him ; the 
climate, the soil, the whole conditions of life were exactly 
what he would have them to be. He lived up to the age 
of fifty-four a contented, stolid, happy, dissolute Elector 



of Hanover ; and it was a complete disturbance to all his 
habits and his predilections when the expected death of 
Anne compelled him to turn his thoughts to England. 

The other claimant of the English crown was .lames 
Frederick Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, as he came 
to be afterwards called by his enemies, the Chevalier de 
Saint George, as his friends called him when they did 
not think it prudent to give him the title of king. James 
was the step-brother of Queen Anne. He sras the son of 
James the Second, by James's second wife, .Maria D'Este, 
sister to Francis, Duke of Modena. Maria was only the 
age of Juliet, when she married: she had just passed her 
fourteenth year. Unlike Juliet she was 'not beautiful; 
unlike Juliet she was poor. She was, however, a devout, 
Roman Catholic, and therefore was especially acceptable 
to her husband. She had four children in quick succes- 
sion, all of whom died in infancy ; and then for ten years 
she had no child. The London Gazette surprised the 
world one day by the announcement that the Queen had 
become pregnant, and upon June 10, 1688, she gave birth 
to a son. It need hardly be told now that the wildest 
commotion was raised by the birth of the prince. The 
great majority of the Protestants insinuated, or stoutly 
declared, thai the alleged heir-apparent was not a child 
of the Queen. The story was that a newly-born child, 
the son of a poor miller, had been brought into the 
Queen's room in a warming-pan, and passed oil' as the 
son of the Queen. It was said that Father Petre, a Cath- 
olic clergyman, had been instrumental in carrying out 
this contrivance, and therefore the enemies of the royal 
family talked of the young prince as Perkin or l'etrcl'in. 
The warming-pan was one of the most familiar objects in 
satirical literature and art for many generations after. 
A whole school of caricature was heated into life, if we 
may use such an expression, by this fabulous warming- 
pan. Warming-pans were associated with brass money 
and w len shoes in the mouths and minds of Whig par- 
tisans down to a day not very far remote from our own. 
Mr. Jubson, the. vulgar lawyer in Scott's "Rob Roy," 
talks rudely to Diana Vernon, a Catholic, about "King 
William, of glorious and immortal memory, our immortal 
deliverer from Papists and pretenders, and wooden shoes 
and warming-pans." "Sad things those wooden shoes 
and warming-pans," retorted the young lady, who seemed 
to take pleasure in augmenting his wrath; "and it, is a 
comfort you don't seem to want a warming-pan at pres- 
ent, Mr. Jobson." There was not, of course, the slightest 
foundation for the absurd story about the spurious heir 
to the throne. Some little excuse was given for tin; 
spread of such a tale by the mere fact that there had 
been delay in summoning the proper officials to lie pres- 
ent at the birth ; but despite all the pains Bishop Burnet 
takes to make the report seem trustworthy, it may be 
doubted whether any one whose opinion was worth hav- 
ing seriously believed in the story, even at the time, and 
it soon ceased to have any believers at all. At the time, 
however, it was accepted as an article of faith by a large 
proportion of the outer public; and the supposed Jesuit, 
plot and the supposed warming-pan served as missiles: 
with which to pelt the supporters of the Stuarts, until 
long after there had ceased to be the slightest chance 
whatever of a Stuart restoration. This story of a spu- 
rious heir to a throne repeats itself at various intervals 
of history. The child of Napoleon the First and .Maria 
Louisa was believed by many Legitimist partisans to be 
supposititious. In our own days there were many intel- 
ligent persons in France firmly convinced that the un- 
fortunate Prince Louis Napoleon, who was killed in Zu- 
luland, was not the son of the Empress of the French, 
but that he was the son of her sister, the Duchess of 
Alva, and that he was merely palmed off on the French 
people in order to secure the stability of the Bonapartist 
throne. 

James Stuart was born, as we have said, on June 10, 



e 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



1688, and was therefore still in his twenty-sixth year at the 
time when this history begins. Soon after his birth his 
mother hurried with him to Frame to escape the coming 
troubles, and his father presently followed discrowned, 
lie had led an unhappy life — unhappy all the more be- 
cause of the incessant dissipation with which he tried to 
enliven it. He is described as tall, meagre, and melan- 
choly. Although not strikingly like Charles the First or 
Charles the Second, he had unmistakably the Stuart as- 
pect. Horace Walpole said of him many years after that, 
" without the particular features of any Stuart, the Chev- 
alier has the strong lines and fatality of air peculiar to 
them all." The words " fatality of air "describe very 
expressively that look of melancholy which all the Stuart 
features wore when in repose. The melancholy look rep- 
resented an underlying habitual mood of melancholy, or 
even despondency, which a close observer may read in the 
character of the " merry monarch " himself, for all his mirth 
and his dissipation, just as well as in that of Charles the 
First or of James the Second. The profligacy of Charles 
the Second had little that was joyous in it. James 
Stuart, the Chevalier, had not the abilities and the culture 
of Charles the Second, and he had much the same taste 
for intrigue and dissipation. His amours were already 
beginning to be a scandal, and he drank now and then 
like a man determined at all cost to drown thought. He 
was always the slave of women. Women knew all his 
secrets, and were made acquainted with his projected 
political enterprises. Sometimes the fair favorite to 
whom he had unbosomed himself blabbed and tattled 
all over Versailles or Paris of what she had heard, and 
in some instances, perhaps, she even took her newly- 
acquired knowledge to the English Ambassador and 
disposed of it for a consideration. At this time James 
Stuart is not yet married ; but marriage made as little 
difference in his way of living as it had done in that 
of his elderly political rival, George the Elector. It is 
strange that James Stuart should have made so faint an 
impression upon history and upon literature. Romance 
and poetry, which have done so much for his son, "Bonnie 
Prince Charlie," have taken hardly any account of him. 
He figures in Thackeray's " Esmond," but the picture is 
not made very distinct, even by that master of portrait- 
ure, and the merely frivolous side of his character is pre- 
sented with disproportionate prominence. James Stuart 
had stronger qualities for good or evil than Thackeray 
seems to have found in him. Some of his contempora- 
ries denied him the credit of man's ordinary courage; he 
has even been accused of positive cowardice; but there 
docs not seem to be the slightest ground for such an 
accusation. Studied with the severest eye, his various 
enterprises, and the manner in which he bore himself 
throughout them, would seem to prove that he had cour- 
age enough for any undertaking. Princes seldom show 
any want of physical courage. They are trained from 
their very birth to regard themselves as always on pa- 
rade; and even if they should feel their hearts give way 
in presence of danger, they are not likely to allow it to 
be seen. It was not lack of personal bravery that marred 
the chances of James Stuart. 

It is only doing bare justice to one whose character 
and career have nut with little favor from history, con- 
temporary or recent, to say that James might have made 
his way to the throne with comparative ease if he would 
only consent to change his religion and become a Prot- 
estant. It was again and again pressed upon him by 
English adherents, and even by statesmen in power — by 
Oxford and by Bolirigbroke — that if he could not actually 
become a Protestant he should at least pretend to become 
one, and give up all outward show of his devotion to the 
Catholic Church. James steadily and decisively refused 
to be guilty of any meanness so ignoble and detestable. 
His conduct in thus adhering to his convictions, even at 
the cost of a throne, has been contrasted with that of 



Henry the Fourth, who declared Paris to be "well worth 
a mass !" But some injustice has been done to Henry the 
Fourth in regard to his conversion. Henry's great Prot- 
estant minister, Sully, urged him to become an open and 
professing Catholic, on the ground that he had always 
been a Catholic more or less consciously and in his heart. 
Sully gave Henry several evidences, drawn from his ob- 
servation of Henry's own demeanor, to prove to him that 
his natural inclinations and the turn of his intellect al- 
ways led him towards the Catholic faith, commenting 
shrewdly on the fact that he had seen Henry cross himself 
more than once on the field of battle in the presence of 
danger. Thus, according to Sully, Henry the Fourth, in 
professing himself a Catholic, would be only following 
the bent of his own natural inclinations. However that 
may be, it is still the fact that Henry the Fourth, by 
changing his profession of religion, succeeded in obtain- 
ing a crown, and that James the Pretender, by refusing 
to hear of such a change, lost his best chance of a throne. 
What were Anne's own inclinations with regard to the 
succession ? There cannot be much doubt as to the way 
her personal feelings went. There is a history of the reign 
of Queen Anne, written by Dr. Thomas Somerville, " one 
of His Majesty's Chaplains in Ordinary," and published in 
1798, with a dedication " by permission" to the King. It 
is called on its title-page " The History of Great Britain 
during the Reign of Queen Anne, with a Dissertation 
Concerning the Danger of the Protestant Succession." 
Such an author, writing comparatively soon after the 
events, and in a book dedicated to the reigning king, was 
not likely to do any conscious injustice to the memory of 
Queen Anne, and was especially likely to take a fair view 
of the influence which her personal inclinations were 
calculated to have on the succession. Dr. Somerville 
declares with great justice that "mildness, timidity, and 
anxiety were constitutional ingredients in the temper " of 
Queen Anne. This very timidity, this very anxiety, ap- 
pears, according to Dr. Somerville's judgment, to have 
worked favorably for the Hanoverian succession. The 
Queen herself, by sentiment, and by what may be called 
a sort of superstition, leaned much towards the Stuarts. 
"The loss," says Dr. Somerville, "of all her children bore 
the aspect of an angry Providence adjusting punishment 
to the nature and quality of her offence." Her offence, 
of course, was the part she had taken in helping to de- 
throne her father. " Wounded in spirit, and prone to su- 
perstition, she naturally thought of the restitution of the 
crown to her brother as the only atonement she could 
make to the memory of her injured father." This feel- 
ing might have ripened into action with her but for that 
constitutional timidity and anxiety of which Somerville 
speaks. There would undoubtedly have been dangers, ob- 
vious to even the bravest or the most reckless, in an at- 
tempt just then to alter the succession ; but Anne saw 
those dangers " in the most terrific form, and recoiled with 
horror from the sight." Moreover, she had a constitu- 
tional objection, as strong as that of Queen Elizabeth her- 
self, to the presence of an intended successor near her 
throne. "She trembled," says Somerville, "at the idea 
of the presence of a successor, whoever he might be; and 
the residence of her own brother in England was not less 
dreadful to her than that of the electoral prince." But 
it is probable that hail she lived longer she would have 
found herself constrained to put up with the presence 
either of one claimant or the other. Her ministers, who- 
ever they might be, would surely have seen the impera- 
tive necessity of bringing over to England the man whom 
the Queen and they had determined to present to the Eng- 
lish pe iple as the destined heir of the throne. In such an 
evenl as that, and most assuredly if men like Bolingbroke 
had been in power, it may be taken for granted that the 
Queen would have preferred her own brother, a Stuart, to 
the Electoral Prince of Hanover. " What the consequence 
might have been, if the Queen had survived," says Somer- 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



villc, "is merely a matter of conjecture ; but wo may pro- 
nounce, with some degree of assurance, that the Protestant 
interest would have been exposed to more certain and to 
mi ire imminent dangers than ever had threatened it be- 
fore at any period since the revolution." This seems a 
reasonable and just assertion. If Anne had lived much 
longer, it is possible that England might have seen a 
.lames the Third. 

CHAPTER IT. 

PARTIES AND LEADERS. 

All the closing months of Queen Anne's reign were oc- 
cupied by Whigs and Tories, and indeed by Anne herself 
as well, in the invention and conduct of intrigues about the 
succession. The Queen herself, with the grave opening 
before her, kept her fading eyes turned, not to the world 
she was about to enter, but to the world she was about to 
leave. She was thinking much more about the future of 
her throne than about her own soul and future state. The 
Whigs were quite ready to maintain the Hanoverian suc- 
cession by force. They did not expect to be able to carry 
matters easily, and they were ready to encounter a civil 
war. Their belief seems to have been that they and not 
their opponents would have to strike the blow, and they 
had already summoned the Duke of Marlborough from his 
retirement in Flanders to take the lead in their movement. 
Having Marlborough, they knew that they would have the 
army. On the other hand, if Bolingbroke and the Tories 
really had any actual hope of a restoration of the Stuarts, 
it is certain that up to the last moment they had made no 
substantial preparations to accomplish their object. 

The Whigs and Tories divided between them whatever 
political force there was in English society at this time. 
Outside both parties lay a considerable section of people 
who did not distinctly belong to the one faction or the 
other, but were ready to incline now to this and now to 
that, according as the conditions of the hour might inspire 
them. Outside these again, and far outnumbering these 
and all others combined, was the great mass of the English 
people — hard-working, much-suffering, poor, patient, and 
almost absolutely indifferent to changes in governments 
and the humors and struggles of parties. "These wran- 
gling jars of Whig and Tory," says Dean Swift, " are stale 
and old as Troy-town story." But if the principles were 
old, the titles of the parties were new. Steele, in 1710, 
published in the Tatler a letter from Pasquin of Rome 
to Isaac Bickerstaff, asking for "an account of those two 
religious orders which have lately sprung up amongst 
you, the Whigs and the Tories." Steele declared that you 
could not come even among women "but you find them 
divided into Whig and Tory." It was like the famous 
lawsuit in Abdera, alluded to by Lucian and amplified by 
Wieland, concerning the ownership of the ass's shadow, 
on which all the Abderites took sides, and every one was 
cither a "Shadow " or an "Ass." 

Various explanations have been given of these titles 
Whig and Tory. Titus Oates applied the term "Tory," 
which then signified an Irish robber, to those who would 
not believe in his Popish plot, and the name gradually be- 
came extended to all who were supposed to have sympa- 
thy with the Catholic Duke of York. The word " Whig " 
first arose during the Cameronian rising, when it was ap- 
plied to the Scotch Presbyterians, and is derived by some 
from the whey which they habitually drank, and by others 
from a word, "whiggam," used by the western Scottish 
drovers. 

The Whigs and the Tories represent in the main not only 
two political doctrines, but two different feelings in the 
human mind. The natural tendency of some men is to re- 
gard political liberty as of more importance than political 
authority, and of other men to think that the maintenance 
of authority is the first object to be secured, and that only 
so much of individual liberty is to be conceded as will 
not interfere with authority's strictest exercise. Roughly 



speaking, therefore, the Tories were for authority, and the 
Whigs for liberty. The Tories naturally held to the prin- 
ciple of the monarchy and of the State church ; the Whigs 
were inclined for the supremacy of Parliament, and for 
something like an approach to religious equality. Up to 
this time at least the Tory party still accepted the theon 
of the Divine origin of the king's supremacy. The W bigs 
were even then the advocates of a constitutional system, 
and held that the people at. large were the source of mo- 
narchical power. To the .me set of men the sovereign was 
a divinely appointed ruler; to the other he was the hered- 
itary chief of the realm, having the source of his author- 
ity in popular election. The Tories, as the Church party, 
disliked the Dissenters even more than they disliked the 
Roman Catholics. The Whigs were then even inclined 
to regard the Church as a branch of the Civil Service 
— to adopt a much more modern phrasi — ami they were 
in favor of extending freedom of worship to Dissenters, 
and in a certain sense to Roman Catholics. According to 
Bishop Burnet, it was in the reign of Queen Anne that 
the distinction between High-Church and Low-Church 
first marked itself out, and we find almost as a natural 
necessity that the High-Churchmen were Tories, and the 
Low-Churchmen were Whigs. Then as now the chief 
strength of the Tories was found in the country, and not 
in the large towns. So far as town populations were con- 
cerned, the Tories were proportionately strongest where; 
the borough was smallest. The great bulk of the agricult- 
ural population, so far as it had definite political feelings, 
was distinctly Tory. The strength of the Whigs lay in 
the manufacturing towns and the great ports. London 
was at that time much stronger in its Liberal political 
sentiments than it has been more recently. The moneyed 
interest, the bankers, the merchants, were attached to tin; 
Whig party. Many peers and bishops were Whigs, but 
they were chiefly the peers and bishops who owed their 
appointments to William the Third. The French envoy, 
D'Ibervillc, at this time describes the Whigs as having at 
their command the best purses, the best swords, the ablest, 
heads, and the handsomest women. The Tory party was 
strong at the University of Oxford ; the Whig party was 
in greater force at Cambridge. Both Whigs and Tories, 
however, were in a somewhat subdued condition of mind 
about the time that Anne's reign was closing. Neither 
party as a whole was inclined to push its political prin- 
ciples to anything like a logical extreme. Whigs and 
Tories alike were practically satisfied with the form which 
the English governing system had put on after the Revo- 
lution of 1688. Neither party was inclined for another 
revolution. The civil war had carried the Whig princi- 
ple a little too far for the Whigs. The Restoration had 
brought a certain amount of scandal on sovereign author- 
ity and the principle of Divine right. The minds of men 
were settling down into, willingness for a compromise. 
There were, of course, among the Tories the extreme 
party, so pledged to the restoration of the Stuarts that 
they would have moved heaven and earth, at all events 
they would have convulsed England, for the sake of bring- 
ing them back. These men constituted what would now 
be called in the language of French politics the Extretne 
Right of the Tory party ; they would become of impor- 
tance at any hour when some actual movement was made 
from the outside to restore the Stuarts. Such a movement 
would of course have carried with it and with them the 
great bulk of the new quiescent Tory party ; but in the 
mean time, and until some such movement was made, the 
Jacobite section of the Tories was not in a condition to be 
active or influential, and was not a serious difficulty in the 
way of the Hanoverian succession. 

The Whigs had great advantages on their side. They 
had a clear principle to start with. The constitutional er- 
rors and excesses of the Stuarts had forced on the mind of 
England a recognition of the two or three main princi- 
ples of civil and religious liberty. The Whigs knew what 



A 1IISTOKY OK TIIK I'ol'U 0EOMGE.S. 



they wanted better than the Tories did, and the ends 
w lii«di the Whigs proposed to gain were attainable, while 
those which the Tories set oul for themselves were (■> a 
great extent Nisi in dream land. The uncertainty and 
vagueness of many of the Tory aims made some of the 
Tories themselves only hall' earnest in their purposes. 
Many a Ton who talked as loudly as his brothers about 

i he ting having his own again, and who toasted " the king 

over (lie water" as freely as they, had in the bottom of 

his heart very little real anxiety to see a rebellion end in 
;i Stuart restoration. Hut, on the other hand, the Whigs 

could strive with all their might and main to carry out 
(heir principles in Church and in Slate without the re- 
sponsibility of plunging the country into rebellion, and 

Without any dread of seeing their projects melt away 

into visions and chimeras. A grea_( hand of landed pro- 
prietors formed the leaders of the Whigs, Times have 
changed since t hen, and the represental Lvesof some of those 

greal houses which then led the Whig party have passed 

or glided insensibly into the ranks of the Tories ; but the 

main reason lor this is because a 'Tory of our day repre- 
sents fairly enough, in certain political aspects, (lie Whig 
of the days of Queen Anne. What is called in American 

politioS a new departure has taken |>lace ill England since 

thai time ; the Radical party has come into existence with 

political principles and watchwords quite different even 
From t hose of the early Whigs. Some of the Whig houses, 
not many, have gone with the forward movement; sonic 

have remained behind, and so lapsed almost insensibly into 
the Torj quarter. Butal the close of" Queen Anne's reign 
.all the ureal leading Whigs stood well together. They 

understood belter than the Tories did the necessity of 

obtaining superior influence in the House of Commons. 

They even contrived at that time to secure the majority 

of the county constituencies, while they had naturally the 
majority of the commercial class on their side. Then, as 
in later days, the vast wealth of the Whig families was spent 
unstintingly, and it maj be said unblushingly, in scouring 
the possession of the small constituencies, the constituencies 

which wen 1\ to be had by liberal bribery. Then,asafter- 

wards, there was perceptible in the Whig party a strange 
combination of dignity and of meanness, of greal princi- 
ples and of somewhat degraded practices. They had high 
purpose's ; they recognized noble principles, and they held 
to them ; they were for political liberty as they then un- 
derstood it, ami they were for religious equality — forsuoh 
approach at least to religious equality as had then come 
to be sanctioned by responsible politicians in England. 
They were ready to make great Sacrifices in defence id' 
their political oreed. I'>ul the principles and purposes 
with which they started, and to which they kept, did not 
succeed in purifying and ennobling all their parliamen- 
tary strategy and political oonduct. They intrigued, thej 

bribed, lh,\ bought, they cajoled, they paltered, they 

threatened, they made unsparing use of money and of 
power, they employed every art to carry out high and 
national purposes which the most unscrupulous cabal could 
have used lo secure the attainment of selfish and ignoble 
ends. Their enemies had put one great advantage into 
their hands. The conduct of Bolingbroke and of Oxford 
during recent years had left the Whigs the sole represent- 
al ives of const itutioiial liberty. 

The two greal political parties hated and denounced 

each other with a ferocity hardlj known before, and 
hardly possible in our later times. The Whigs vituper- 
ated the' Tories as rebels and traitors; the Tories cried 

out against the Whigs as the enemies of religion and the 

opponents of "the true Church of England." Many a 
ballad of that time described the Whigs as men whose 
object it was to destroy both mitre and crown, to intro- 
duce anarchy once again, as they had done in the days of 
Oliver Cromwell. The Whig balladists retorted by de- 
scribing the Tories as men who were engaged in trying 
to bring in "Perkin" from France, and prophesied the 



halter as a reward of their leading statesmen. In truth, 
the bitterness "f that hour was very earnest ; most of the 
men on both sides meant what they said. Either side, if 
it had been in complete preponderance, would probably 
have had very little scruple in disposing of its leading 
enemies by means of the halter or the prison. It was for 
the time not so much a Struggle of political parlies as a 
Struggle of hostile armies. The men were serious and 

savage, because the crisis was serious and portentous. 

The chances of an hour might make a man a prime-min- 
ister Or a prisoner. Bolingbroke soon after was in exile, 
and Walpole at (lie head of the administration. The 
slightest chance, the merest accident, might have sent 
Walpole into exile, and put Bolingbroke at the head of 
the Stale. 

The eyes of the English public were at this moment 
turned in especial to watch the movements of two men — 

the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Bolingbroke. Marl- 
borough was beyond question the greatesl soldier of his 

time. lie had gone into exile when Queen Anne con- 
sented to degrade him and to persecute him, and now he 
was on his way home, at the urgenl entreaty of the Wine; 
leaders, in order to lend his powerful influence to the 
1 lano\ erian cause. 

The character of the Duke of Marlborough is one 

which OUghl to be especially attractive to the authors of 

romance and the lovers of strong, bold portrait-painting. 
One peculiar difficulty, however, a romancist would have 
in dealing with Marlborough — he could hardly venture 
to paint Marlborough as nature and fortune made him. 
The romancist would find himself compelled to soften 
and to modify many of the distinctive traits of Marl- 
borough's oharacter, in older thai he might not seem 
the mere inventor of a human paradox, in order that he 
might not appear to be indulging iu the fantastic and 
the impossible. Pope has called Paeon "the wisest, 
brightest, meanest of mankind," but Paeon was not 
greater in his own path than Marlborough in his, and 

Bacon's worst meannesses were nobility itself compared 
with some of Marlborough's political offences. Marl- 
borough started in life with almost every advantage that, 
man could have — with genius, with boundless courage, 
with personal beauty, with favoring friends. From his 
early youth he had been attached to .lames the Second 
and .lames the Second's court. One id' Marlborough's 
biographers even suggests that the Duchess of York, 
James's first wife, was needlessly fond of young Church- 
ill. The beautiful Duchess of Cleveland — she of whom 
PepVS said ''that everything she did became her"— was 
passionately in love with Marlborough, and, according to 
Some writers, gave him his first start in life when she 
presented him with live thousand pounds, which Marl- 
borough, prudent then as ever, invested in an annuity of 
five hundred a year. Puriicl said of him that "he km w 
tin- arts of living in a court beyond any man in it; he 
Caressed all people with a soft and obliging deport incut , 
and was always ready to do good offices." His only per- 
sonal defect was in his voice, which was shrill and disa- 
greeable. He Was, through all his life, avaricious to the 
last degree ; he grasped at money wherever he could get 
it ; he took money from women as well as from men. A 
familiar story of the time represents another nobleman as 
having been mistaken for i he Duke of Marlborough by a 
mob, at a time when Marlborough was unpopular, and 
extrioating himself from the difficulty by telling the 

Crowd he could not possibly be t lie Duke of Marlborough, 
first, because he had only two guineas in his pocket, and 
next, because he was perfectly ready to give them away. 
Marlborough had received the highest favors from .lames 
the Second, but he quitted .lames in the hour of his mis- 
fort lines, only, however, il should be said, lo return secret- 
ly to his service at a time when he was professing devo- 
tion to William the Third. lie betrayed each side to the 
other. In the same year, and almost in the same month. 



A HISTORY OF THE KOCH GEORGES. 



he writes to the Elector at Hanover and to the Pretender 
in France, pouring forth to each alike his protestations of 

devotion. " I shall be always ready to hazard my fort line 
ami my life for your service," he tells the Elector. "I 
had rather have my hands cut off than do anything prej- 
udicial to King James's cause," he tells an agent of the 
Stuarts. James appears to have believed in Marlborough, 
and William, while he made use of him, to have had no 
faith in him. "The Duke of Marlborough," William 
said, " has the best talents fur a general of any man in 
England ; but he is a vile man and I hate him, for 
though I can profit by treasons I cannot bear the traitor." 
William's saying was strikingly like that one ascribed to 
Philip of Macedon. Schomberg spoke of Marlborough 
as "the tirst lieutenant-general whom I ever remember 
to have deserted his colors."' Lord Granard, who was in 
the camp of King James the Second on Salisbury Plain, 
told Dr. King, who has recorded the story, that Churchill 
and some other colonels invited Lord Granard to supper, 
ami opened to him their design of deserting to the Prince 
of Orange. Granard not merely refused to enter into 
the conspiracy, but went to the King and told him the 
whole story, advising him to seize Marlborough and the 
other conspirators. Perhaps if this advice had been fol- 
lowed. King William would never have come to the 
throne of England. James, however, gave no credit to 
the story, and took no trouble about it. Next morning 
he found his mistake ; but it was then too late. The 
truth of this story is corroborated by other authorities, 
one of them Vicing King James himself, who afterwards 
stated that he had received information of Lord Church- 
ill's designs, and was recommended to seize his person, 
but that he unfortunately neglected to avail himself of 
the advice. " Speak of that no more," says Egmont, in 
Goethe's play; "I was warned." 

Swift said of Marlborough that "he is as covetous as 
hell, and ambil ions as the prince of it." Marlborough w r as 
as ignorant as he was avaricious. Literary taste or in- 
stinct he must have had, because he read with so much 
eagerness the historical plays of Shakespeare, and indeed 
frankly owned that his only knowledge of English history 
was taken from their scenes. Even in that time of loose 
spelling his spelling is remarkably loose. He seems to 
spell without any particular principle in the matter, sel- 
dom rendering the same word a second time by the same 
combination of letters. He was at one period of his life 
a libertine of the loosest order, so far as morals were con- 
cerned, but of the shrewdest kind as regarded personal 
gain and advancement. He would have loved any Lady 
Bellaston who presented herself, and who could have re- 
warded him for his kindness. He was not of the type of 
Byron's " Don Juan," who declares that 

The prisoned eagle will not pair, nor I 
Serve a Sultana's sensual phantasy. 

Marlborough would have served any phantasy for gain. 
It has been said of him that the reason for his being so 
successful with women as a young man was that he took 
money of them. Yet, as another striking instance of the 
paradoxical nature of his character, he was intensely de- 
voted to his wife. He was the true-lover of Sarah Jen- 
nings, who afterwards became Duchess of Marlborough. 
A man of the most undaunted courage in the presence of 
the enemy, he was his wife's obedient, patient, timid slave. 
He lived more absolutely under her control than Belisari- 
iis under the government of his unscrupulous helpmate. 
Sarah Jennings was, in her way, almost as remarkable as 
her husband. She was a woman of great heauty. Colley 
Cibber, in his "Apology," pays devoted testimony to her 
charms. He had by chance to attend on her in the capac- 
ity of a sort of amateur lackey at an entertainment in 
Nottingham, and he seems to have been completely daz- 
zled by her loveliness. "If so clear an emanation of 
beauty, such a commanding grace of aspect, struck me 



into a regard that had something softer than the most 
profound respect in it, I cannot see why I may not with- 
out offence remember it, since beauty, like the sun, must 
sometimes lose its power to choose, and shine into eijual 
warmth the peasant and the courtier." He quaintly adds, 
"However presumptuous or impertinent these thoughts 
may have appeared at my first entertaining them, why may 
I not hope that my having kept themdecently a secret for 
full fifty years may be now a good round plea for their 
pardon?" The imperious spirit which could rule Church- 
ill long dominated the feeble nature of Queen Anne. But 
when once this domination was overthrown, Sarah Jen- 
nings had no art to curb her temper into such show of re- 
spect and compliance as might have won back her lost 
honors. She met her humiliation with the most childish 
bursts of passion; she did everything in her power to 
annoy and insult the Queen who had passed from her 
haughty control. She was always a keen hater; to the 
last day of her life she never forgot her resentment to- 
wards all who had, or who she thought had, injured her. 
In long later years she got into unseemly lawsuits with 
her own near relations. But if one side of her character 
was harsh and unlovely enough, it may be admitted that 
there was something not unheroic about her unyielding 
spirit — something noble in the respect to her husband's 
memory, which showed itself in the declaration that she 
would not marry "the emperor of the world" after hav- 
ing been the wife of John, Duke of Marlborough. 

Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was in his way 
as great a man as the Duke of Marlborough. At tin- 
time we are now describing he seemed to have passed 
through a long, a varied, and a brilliant career, and yet he 
had only arrived at the age when public men in England 
now begin to be regarded as responsible politicians, lb- 
was in his thirty-sixth year. The career thai had prema- 
turely begun was drawing to its premature close. He had 
climbed to his highest position ; he is Prime-minister of 
England, and has managed to get rid of his old colleague 
and rival, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford. Bolingbroke 
had almost every gilt and grace (hat nature and fortune 
could give. Three years before this Swift wrote to Stella, 
"I think Mr. St. John the greatest young man I ever 
knew ; wit, capacity, beauty, quickness of apprehension, 
good learning ami an excellent taste; the greatest orator 

in the House of Commons, admirable nversation, good 

nature and good manners, generous, and a despiser of 
money." Yet, as in the fairy story, the benign powers 
which had combined to endow him so richly had withheld 
the one gift which might have made all the rest of sur- 
passing value, and which being denied left them of little- 
account. If Bolingbroke had had principle he would have 
been one of the greatest Englishmen of any time. His 
utter want of morality in polities, as well as in private 
life, proved fatal to him;'he only climbed high in order 
to fall the lower. He was remarkable for profligacy even 
in that heedless and profligate time. Voltaire, in one of 
his letters, tells a story of a famous London courtesan who 
exclaimed to some of her companion nymphs, on hearing 
that Bolingbroke had been made Secretary of State, " Sev- 
en thousand guineas a year, girls, and all for us !" Even if 
the story be not true it is interesting and significant as an 
evidence of the sort of impression which Bolingbroke had 
made upon his age. It was his glory to be vicious ; he was 
proud of his orgies. Hi- liked to be known as a man who 
could spend the whole nighi in a drunken revel, and the 
afternoon in preparing some despatch on which the fort- 
unes of his country or the peace of the world might, de- 
pend. The sight of a beautiful woman could turn liiin 
away for the time from (he gravest political purposes. 
He was ready tit such a moment to throw anything over 
fertile sake of the sudden love-chase which had come in 
his way. He bragged of his amours, and boasted that In- 
had never failed of success with any woman who seemed 
to him worth pursuing. Like Faust, he loved to reel from 



10 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



desire to enjoyment, and from enjoyment back again into 
desire. Bolingbroke was the first of a great line of par- 
liamentary debaters who have made for themselves a dis- 
tinct place in English history, and whose rivals are not to 
be found in the history of any other Parliament. It is 
difficult at this time to form any adequate idea of Boling- 
broke's style as a speaker or his capacity for debate when 
compared with other great English parliamentary orators. 
But so far as one may judge, we should be inclined to 
think that he must have had Fox's readiness without 
Fox's redundancy and repetition ; and that he must have 
had the stately diction and the commanding style of the 
younger Pitt, with a certain freshness and force which 
the younger Pitt did not always exhibit. Bolingbroke's 
English prose style is hardly surpassed by that of any 
other author, either before his time or since. It is supple, 
strong, and luminous ; not redundant, but not bare ; orna- 
mented where ornament is suitable and even useful, but 
nowhere decorated with the purple rags of unnecessary 
and artificial brilliancy. Such a man, so gifted, must in 
any case have held a high place among his contemporaries, 
and probably if Bolingbroke had possessed the political 
ami personal virtues of men like Burke and Pitt, or even 
the political virtues of a man like Charles Fox, he would 
have been remembered as the greatest of all English par- 
liamentary statesmen. But, as we have already said, the 
one defect filled him with faults. The lack of principle 
gave him a lack of purpose, and wanting purpose he perse- 
vered in no consistent political path. Swift has observed 
that Bolingbroke " had a great respect for the characters 
of Alcibiades and Petronius, especially the latter, whom he 
would gladly be thought to resemble." He came nearer 
at his worst to Petronius than at his best to Alcibiades. 
Alcibiades, to do him justice, admired and understood 
virtue in others, however small the share of it he con- 
trived to keep for himself. It is impossible to read that 
wonderful compound of dramatic humor and philosophic 
thought, Plato's "Banquet," without being moved by the 
generous and impassioned eulogy which Alcibiades, in the 
fulness of his heart and of his wine, pours out upon the 
austere virtue of Socrates. Such as Alcibiades is there 
described we may suppose Alcibiades to have been, and 
no one who has followed the career of Bolingbroke can 
believe it possible that he ever could have felt any sincere 
admiration for virtue in man or woman, or could have 
thought of it otherwise than as a thing to be sneered at 
and despised. The literary men, and more especially the 
poets of the days of Bolingbroke, seem to have had as lit- 
tle scruple in their compliments as a French petit-maitre 
might have in sounding the praises of his mistress to his 
mistress's ears. Pope talks of his villa, where, "nobly 
pensive, St. John sat and thought," and declared that such 

* ° Tread this sacred floor 

Who dare to love their country and be poor. 

It is hard to think of Bolingbroke, even in his more ad- 
vanced years, as "nobly pensive," sitting and thinking, 
and certainly neither Bolingbroke nor any of Boling- 
broke's closer political associates was exactly the sort of 
man who would have dared " to love his country and be 
poor." In Bolingbroke's latest years we hear of him as 
amusing himself by boasting to his second wife of his 
various successful amours, until at last the lady, w T eary 
of the repetition, somewhat contemptuously reminds him 
that however happy as a lover he may have been once, 
his days of love were now over, and the less he said about 
it the better. 

Nor was Pope less extravagant in his praise to Harley 
than to St. John. He says : 

If aught below the seats divine 
Can touch immortals, 'tis a soul like thine ; 
A soul supreme, in each hard instance tried, 
Above all pain, all passion, and all pride, 
The rage of power, the blast of public breath, 
The lust of lucre, and the dread of death. 



These lines, it is right to remember, were addressed to 
Harley, not in his power, but after his fall. Even with 
that excuse for a friend's overcharged eulogy, they read 
like a satire on Harley rather than like his panegyric. 
Caricature itself could not more broadly distort the feat- 
ures of a human being than his poetic admirer has altered 
the lineaments of Oxford. Harley had been intriguing 
on both sides of the field. He professed devoted loyalty 
to the Queen and to her appointed successor, and he was 
at the same time coquetting, to put it mildly, with the 
Stuart family in France. Nothing surprises a reader 
more than the universal duplicity that seems to have 
prevailed in the days of Anne and of the early Georges. 
Falsehood appears to have been a recognized diplomatic 
and political art. Statesmen, even of the highest rank and 
reputation, made no concealment of the fact that when- 
ever occasion required they were ready to state the thing 
which was not, either in private conversation or in public 
debate. Nothing could exceed or excuse the boundless 
duplicity of Marlborough, but it must be owned that even 
William the Third told almost as many falsehoods to 
Marlborough as Marlborough could have told to him. At 
a time when William detested Marlborough, he yet occa- 
sionally paid him in public and in private the very high- 
est compliments on his integrity and his virtue. Men 
were not then supposed or expected to speak the truth. 
A statesman might deceive a foreign minister or the Par- 
liament of his own country with as little risk to his repu- 
tation as a lady would have undergone, in later days, 
who told a lie to the custom-house officer at the frontier to 
save the piece of smuggled lace in her trunk. 

If a man like William of Nassau could stoop to deceit 
and falsehood for any political purpose, it is easy to un- 
derstand that a man like Harley would make free use of 
the same arts, and for personal objects as well. Harley's 
political changes were so many and so rapid that they 
could not possibly be explained by any theory consistent 
with sincerity. It was well said of him that " his humor 
is never to deal clearly or openly, but always with reserve, 
if not dissimulation, and to love tricks when not necessary, 
but from an inward satisfaction in applauding his own 
cunning." He entered Parliament in 1689, and in 1700 
was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. At that 
time, and for long after, it was not an uncommon thing 
that a man who had been Speaker should afterwards 
become a Secretary of State, sitting in the same House. 
This was Harley's case: in 1704 he was made principal 
Secretary of State. In 1708 Harley resigned office, and 
immediately after took the leadership of the Tory party. 
In about two years he overthrew the Whig administra- 
tion, and became the head of a new government, with the 
place of Lord High Treasurer, and the title of Earl of Ox- 
ford. His craft seems only to have been that low kind of 
artifice which enables an unscrupulous man to cajole his 
followers and to stir up division among his enemies. His 
word was not to be relied upon by friend or enemy, and 
Avhen he most affected a tone of frankness or of candor he 
was least to be trusted. As Lord Stanhope well says of 
him, " His slender and pliant intellect was well fitted to 
crawl up to the heights of power through all the crooked 
mazes and dirty by-paths of intrigue ; but having once 
attained the pinnacle, its smallness and meanness were 
exposed to all the world." Even his private life had not 
the virtues which one who reads some of the exalted pan- 
egyrics paid to him by contemporary poets and others 
would be apt to imagine. He was fond of drink and fond 
of pleasure in a small and secret way; his vices were as 
unlike the daring and brilliant profligacy of his colleague 
and rival Bolingbroke as his intellect was inferior to Bol- 
ingbroke's surpassing genius. For all Pope's poetic eu- 
logy, the poet could say in prose of Lord Oxford that he 
was not a very capable minister, and had a good deal of 
negligence into the bargain. " He used to send trifling 
verses from court to the Scriblerus Club every day, and 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



11 



would come and talk idly with them almost every night, 
even when his all was at stake." Pope adds that Oxford 
" talked of business in so confused a manner that you did 
not know what he was about, and everything he went to 
tell you was in the epic way, for he always began in the 
middle." Swift calls him " the greatest procrastinator in 
the world." It is of Lord Oxford that the story is origi- 
nally told which has been told of so many statesmen here 
and in America since his time. Lord Oxford, according 
to Pope, invited Rowe, the dramatic poet, to learn Span- 
ish. Rowe went to work, and studied Spanish under the 
impression that some appointment at the Spanish court 
would follow. When he returned to Harley and told him 
he had accomplished the task, Harley said, " Then, Mr. 
Rowe, I envy you the pleasure of reading ' Don Quixote ' 
in the original." Pope asks, "Is not that cruel?" But 
others have held that it was unintentional on Lord Ox- 
ford's part, and merely one of his unthinking oddities. 

Another man, fifteen years younger than Harley, a 
school-fellow at Eton of Bolingbroke, was rising slowly, 
surely, into prominence and power. All the great part of 
his career is yet to come ; but even already, while men 
were talking of Malborough and Bolingbroke, they found 
themselves compelled to give a place in their thoughts to 
Robert Walpole. If Bolingbroke was the first, and per- 
haps the most brilliant, of the great line of parliamentary 
debaters who have made debate a moving power in Eng- 
lish history, Walpole was the first of that line of states- 
men who, sprung from the class of the " Commoner," have 
become leaders of the English Parliament. In position 
and in influence, although not in personal character or ac- 
complishments, Walpole may be described as the direct 
predecessor of Peel and Gladstone. Just two years be- 
fore the death of William the Third, Walpole entered 
Parliament for the first time. He married, entered Par- 
liament, and succeeded to his father's estates in the same 
year, 1700. Walpole was only twenty-four years of age 
when he took his seat in the House of Commons as mem- 
ber for Castle Rising in Norfolk. He was a young coun- 
try squire of considerable fortune, and a thorough sup- 
porter of the Whig party. Walpole came into Parlia- 
ment at that happytime for men of his position when the 
change was already taking place which marked the repre- 
sentative assembly as the controlling power in the State. 
The Government as a direct ruling power was beginning 
to grow less and less effective, and the House of Commons 
beginning to grow more and more strong. This change 
had begun to set in during the Restoration, and by the 
time Walpole came to be known in Parliament it was be- 
coming more and more evident that the Ministers of State 
were in the future only to be men intrusted with the duty 
of carrying out the will of the majority in the House of 
Commons. Before that majority every other power in 
the State was ultimately to bend. The man, therefore, 
who could by eloquence, genuine statesmanship, and force 
of character, or even by mere tact, secure the adhesion of 
that majority, had become virtually the ruler of the State. 
But as will easily be seen, his rule even then was some- 
thing very different indeed from the rule of an arbitrary 
minister. He would have to satisfy, to convince, to con- 
ciliate the majority. A single false step, an hour's weak- 
ness of purpose, nay, even a failure for which he was not 
himself accountable in home or foreign policy, might de- 
prive him of his influence over the majority, and might 
reduce him to comparative insignificance. Therefore, the 
controlling power which a great minister acquired was 
held by virtue of the most constant watchfulness, the 
mast unsparing labor, energy, and devotion, and also in a 
great measure by the favor of fortune and of opportunity. 

Walpole was a man eminently qualified to obtain in- 
fluence over the House of Commons, and to keep it up 
when he had once obtained it. No man could have prom- 
ised less in the beginning. That was an acute observer 
who divined the genius of Cromwell under Cromwell's 



homely exterior when he first came up to Parliament. 
Almost as much acuteness would have been needed to 
enable any one to see the future Prime-minister of Eng- 
land and master of the House of Commons in the plain, 
unpromising form, the homely, almost stolid countenance, 
the ungainly movements and gestures of Walpole. Wal- 
pole was as much of a rustic as Lord Althorp in times 
nearer to our own acknowledged himself to be. Althorp 
said he ought to have been a grazier, and that it was an 
odd chance which made him Prime-minister. But the 
difference was great. Walpole had the gifts which make 
a man prime-minister, despite his country gentleman or 
grazier-like qualities. It was not chance, but Walpole 
himself which raised him to the position he came to hold. 
Walpole knew nothing and cared nothing about literature 
and art. His great passion was for hunting ; his next 
love was for wine, and his third for his dinner. Without 
any natural gift of eloquence he became a great debater. 
Nature, which seemed to have lavished all her most lux- 
urious gifts on Bolingbroke, appeared to have pinched 
and starved Walpole. Where Bolingbroke was richest 
Walpole was poorest ; Bolingbroke's genius required a 
frequent rein ; Walpole's intellect needed the perpetual 
spur. Yet Walpole, with his lack of imagination, of elo- 
quence, of wit, of humor, and of culture, went farther and 
did more than the brilliant Bolingbroke. It was the old 
fable of the hare and the tortoise over again ; perhaps it 
should rather be called a new version of the old fable. 
The farther the hare goes in the wrong way the more she 
goes astray, and thus many of Bolingbroke's most rapid 
movements only helped the tortoise to get to the goal 
before him. In 1708 Walpole, now recognized as an able 
debater, a clever tactician, and, above all things, an ex- 
cellent man of business, was appointed Secretary at War. 
He became at the same time leader of the House of Com- 
mons. He was one of the managers in the unfortunate 
impeachment of the empty-headed High-Church preacher, 
Dr. Sacheverell. He resigned office with the other Whig 
ministers in 1710. Harley coming into power offered 
him a place in the new administration, which Walpole 
declined to accept. The Tories, reckless and ruthless in 
their majority, expelled Walpole from the House in 1712 
and imprisoned him in the Tower. The charge against 
him was one of corruption, a charge easily made in those 
days against any minister, and which, if high moral prin- 
ciples were to prevail, might probably have been as easily 
sustained as it was made. Walpole, however, was not 
worse than his contemporaries ; nor, even if he had been, 
would the contemporaries have been inclined to treat his 
offences very seriously so long as they were not inspired 
to act against him by partisan motives. At the end of 
the session he was released, and now, in the closing days 
of Anne's reign, all eyes turned to him as a rising man 
and a certain bulwark of the new dynasty. 

It would be impossible not to regard Jonathan Swift 
as one of the politicians, one of the statesmen, of this age. 
Swift was a politician in the highest sense, although he 
had seen little of the one great political arena in which 
the battles of English parties were fought out. He lias 
left it on record that he never heard either Bolingbroke 
or Harley speak in Parliament or anywhere in public. 
He was at this time about forty-seven years of age, and 
had not yet reached his highest point in politics or in 
literature. The "Tale of a Tub" had been written, but 
not "Gulliver's Travels ;" the tract on "The Conduct of 
the Allies," but not the "Drapier's Letters." Even at 
this time he was a power in political life ; his was an 
influence with which statesmen and even sovereigns had 
to reckon. No pen ever served a cause better than his 
had served, and was yet to serve, the interests of the 
Tory party. He was probably the greatest English pam- 
phleteer at a time when the pamphlet had to do all the 
work of the leading article and most of the work of the 
platform. His churchmen's gown sat uneasily on him; 



12 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



he was like one of the fighting bishops of the Middle 
Ages, with whom armor was the more congenial wear. 
He had a fierce and domineering temper, and indeed out 
of liis strangely bright blue eyes there was already 
beginning to shine only too ominously the wild light 
of that sceva indignatio which the inscription drawn up 
by his own hand for his tomb described as lacerating 
his heart. The ominous light at last broke out into the 
fire of insanity. We shall meet Swift again ; just now 
we only stop to note him as a political influence. At this 
time he is Dean of St. Patrick's in Ireland; he has been 
lately in London trying, and without success, to bring 
about a reconciliation between Bolingbroke and Harley ; 
and, finding his efforts ineffectual, and seeing that trou- 
bled times were near at hand, he has quietly withdrawn 
to Berkshire. Before leaving London he wrote the let- 
ter to Lord Peterborough containing the remarkable 
words with which we have opened this volume. It is 
curious that Swift himself afterwards ascribed to Harley 
the saying about the Queen's health and the heedless be- 
havior of statesmen. In his " Enquiry into the Behaviour 
of the Queen's Last Ministry," dated June, 1715, he tells 
us that "about Christmas, 1713," the Treasurer said to 
him " whenever anything ails the Queen these people are 
out of their wits; and yet they are so thoughtless that 
as soon as she is well they act as if she were immortal." 
To which Swift adds the following significant comment : 
" I had sufficient reason, both before and since, to allow 
his observation to be true, and that some share of it might 
with justice be applied to himself." It was at the house 
of a clergyman at Upper Letcomb, near Wantage, in 
Berkshire, that Swift stayed for some time before return- 
ing to his Irish home. From Letcomb the reader will per- 
haps note with some painful interest that Swift wrote 
to Miss Esther Vanhomrigh, whom all generations will 
know as Vanessa, a letter, in which he describes his some- 
what melancholy mode of life just then, tells her "this 
is the first syllable I have wrote to anybody since you 
saw me," and adds that " if this place were ten times 
worse, nothing shall make me return to town while things 
are in the situation I left them." 

Swift, in his heart, trusted neither Bolingbroke nor 
Harley. It seems clear that Lady Masham was under 
the impression that she had Swift as her accomplice in 
the intrigue which finally turned Harley out of office. 
She writes to him while he is at Letcomb a letter which 
could not have been written if she were not in that full 
conviction ; and he does not reply until the whole week's 
crisis is past and a new condition of things arisen ; and 
in the reply he commits himself to nothing. If he dis- 
trusted Bolingbroke he could not help admiring him. 
Bolingbroke was the only man then near the court whose 
genius must not have been rebuked by Swift. But Swift 
must, for all his lavish praises of Harley, have sometimes 
secretly despised the hesitating, time-serving statesman, 
with whom indecision was a substitute for prudence, and 
to be puzzled was to seem to deliberate. That Harley 
should have had the playing of a great political game 
while Swift could only look on, is one of the anomalies 
of history which Swift's sardonic humor must have ap- 
preciated to the full. Swift took his revenge when he 
could by bullying his great official friends now and then 
in the roughest fashion. He knew that they feared him, 
and flattered him because they feared him, and he \\;is 
glad of it, and hugged himself in the knowledge. He 
knew even that at one time they were uncertain of his 
fidelity, and took much pains by their praises and their 
promises to keep him close at their side ; and this, too, 
amused him. He was amused as a tyrant might be at 
the obvious efforts of those around him to keep him in 
good humor, or as a man conscious of incipient madness 
might find malign delight in the anxiety of his friends 
to fall in with all his moods and not to cross him in any- 
thing he was pleased to say. 



Joseph Addison had a political position and influence 
on the other side of the controversy which entitle him to 
be ranked among the statesmen of the day. Only in the 
year before his tragedy of "Cato" had been brought out, 
and it had created an altogether peculiar sensation. Each 
of the two great political parties seized upon the oppor- 
tunity given by Cato's pompous political virtue, and 
claimed him as the spokesman of their cause. The Whigs, 
of course, had the author's authority to appropriate the 
applause of Cato, and the Whigs had endeavored to pack 
the House in order to secure their claim. But the Tories 
were equal to the occasion. They appeared in great num- 
bers, Bolingbroke, then Secretary of State, at their head. 
When Cato lamented the extinguished freedom of his 
country the Whigs were vociferous in their cheers, and 
glared fiercely at the Tories ; but when the austere Ro- 
man was made to denounce Caesar and a perpetual dicta- 
torship, the Tories professed to regard this as a denuncia- 
tion of Marlborough, and his demand to be made com- 
mander-in-chief for life, and they gave back the cheering 
with redoubled vehemence. At last Bolingbroke's own 
genius suggested a master-stroke. He sent for the actor 
who played Cato's part, thanked him in face of the pub- 
lic, and presented him with a purse of gold because of 
the service he had done in sustaining the cause of liberty 
against the tyranny of a perpetual dictator. 

Addison held many high political offices. He was Sec- 
retary to a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland more than once; 
he was made Secretary to the " Regents," as they were 
called — the commissioners intrusted by George the First 
with the task of administration previous to his arrival in 
England. He sat in Parliament; he was appointed Under- 
Secretary of State, and was soon to be for a while one of 
the principal Secretaries of State. The last number of 
his Spectator was published at the close of 1714. This 
was indeed still a time when literary men might hold 
high political office. The deadening influence of the 
Georges had not yet quite prevailed against letters and 
art. Matthew Prior, about whose poetry the present age 
troubles itself but little, sat in Parliament, was employed 
in many of the most important diplomatic negotiations of 
the day, and had not long before this time held the office 
of Plenipotentiary in Paris. Richard Steele not merely 
sat in the House of Commons, but was considered of suffi- 
cient importance to deserve the distinction of a formal 
expulsion from the House because of certain political di- 
atribes for which he was held responsible and which the 
Commons chose to vote libellous. At the time we are 
now describing he had re-entered Parliament, ami was still 
a brilliant penman on the side of the Whigs. His career 
as politician, literary man, and practical dramatist com- 
bined, seems in some sort a foreshadowing of that of 
Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Gay was appointed Secre- 
tary to Lord Clarendon on a diplomatic mission to Han- 
over. Nicholas Rowe, the author of the " Fair Penitent " 
and the translator of Lucan's " Pharsalia," was at one 
time an Under - Secretary of State. Rowe's dramatic 
work is not yet absolutely forgotten by the world. We 
still hear of the "gallant gay Lothario," although many 
of those who are glib with the words do not know that 
they come from the " Fair Penitent," and would not care 
even if they did know. 

CHAPTER III. 

" LOST FOR WANT OF SPIRIT." 

When Bolingbroke found himself in full power he be- 
gan at once to open the way for some attempt at the resto- 
ration of the Stuart dynasty. He put influential Jacobites 
into important offices in England and Scotland; he made 
the Duke of Ormond Warden of the Cinque Ports, that 
authority covering exactly the stretch of coast at some 
point of which it might be expected that James Stuart 
would laud if he were to make an attempt for the crown 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



13 



at all. Ormond was a weak and vain man, but he was 
a man of personal integrity. He had been sent out to 
Flanders to succeed the greatest commander of the age 
as captain-general of the allied armies there, and he had 
naturally played a poor and even ridiculous part. The 
Jacobites in England still, however, held him in much 
honor, identified his name, no one exactly knew why, with 
the cause of High-Church, and elected him the hero and 
the leader of the movement for the restoration of the ex- 
iled family. Bolingbroke committed Scotland to the care 
of the Earl of Mar, a Jacobite, a personal friend of James 
Stuart, and a votary of High-Church. It can hardly lie 
supposed that in making such an appointment Bolingbroke 
had nut in his mind the possibility of a rising of the High- 
land clans against the Hanoverian succession. But it is 
none the less evident that Bolingbroke was as usual think- 
ing far more of himself than of Ids party, and that his 
preparations were made not so much with a view to re- 
storing the Stuarts as with the object of securing himself 
against any chance that might befall. 

Had Bolingbroke been resolved in his heart to bring 
back the Stuarts, had he been ready, as many other men 
were, to risk all in that cause, to stand or fall by it, he 
might, so far as one can see, have been successful. It is 
not too much to say that on the whole the majority of 
the English people were in favor of the Stuarts. Certain- 
ly the majority would have preferred a Stuart to the 
dreaded and disliked German prince from Herrenhausen. 
For many years the birthday of the Stuart prince had 
been celebrated as openly and as enthusiastically in Eng- 
lish cities as if it were the birthday of the reigning sover- 
eign. James's adherents were everywhere — in the court, 
in the camp, on the bench, in Parliament, in the drawing- 
rooms, the coffee - houses, and the streets. Bolingbroke 
had only to present him at a critical moment, and say 
" Here is your king," and James Stuart would have been 
king. Such a crisis came in France in our own days. 
There was a moment, after the fall of the Second Empire, 
when the Count de Chambord had only to present him- 
self in Versailles in order to be accepted as King of 
France, not King of the French. But the Count de. 
Chambord put away his chance deliberately ; he would 
not consent to give up the white flag of legitimacy and 
accept the tricolor. He acted on principle, knowing the 
forfeit of his decision. The chances of James Stuart 
were frittered away in half-heartedness, insincerity, and 
folly. While Bolingbroke and his confederates were ca- 
balling and counselling, and paltering and drinking, the 
Whig statesmen were maturing their plans, and when 
the moment came for action it found them ready to 
act. 

The success was accomplished by a coup-cCetat on Fri- 
day, July 30, 1714. The Queen was suddenly stricken 
with apoplexy. A Privy Council was to meet that morn- 
ing at Kensington Palace. The Privy Council meeting 
was composed then, according to the principle which pre- 
vails still, only of such councillors as had received a spe- 
cial summons. In truth, the meeting of the Privy Council 
in Anne's time was like a Cabinet meeting of our days, 
and was intended by those who convened it to be just as 
strictly composed of official members. But, on the other 
hand, there was no law or rule forbidding any member 
of the Privy Council, whether summoned or not, to pre- 
senl himself at the meeting. Bolingbroke was in his 
place, and so was the Duke of Ormond, and so were other 
Jacobite peers. The Duke of Shrewsbury had taken his 
seat, as he was entitled to do, being one of the highest 
officers of State. Shrewsbury was known to be a loyal 
adherent of the Act of Set I lenient ami the Hanoverian 
Succession. He was a remarkable man with a remarkable 
history. His father was the unfortunate Shrewsbury who 
was killed in a duel by the Duke of Buckingham. " The 
duel arose out of the duke's open intrigue with the Count- 
ess of Shrewsbury, and the story went at the time that 



the lady herself, dressed as a page, held her lover's horse 
while he fought with and killed her husband. Charles 
Talbot, the son, was brought up a Catholic, but in his 
twentieth year accepted the arguments of Tillotson and 
became a Protestant. He was Lord Chamberlain to 
James the Second, but lost all faith in James, and went 
over to Holland to assist William of Nassau with counsel 
and with money. When William became King of Eng- 
land he made Lord Shrewsbury a Privy Councillor and 
Secretary of State, created him first marquis and after- 
wards duke, and called him, in tribute to his great popu- 
larity, the King of Hearts. He was for a short time 
British Ambassador at the Court of France, and then 
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He had flickered a little 
between the Whigs and the Tories at different periods 
of his career, and in 1710 he actually joined the Tory 
party. But it was well known to every one that if any 
question should arise between the House of Hanover and 
the Stuarts, he would stand firmly by the appointed suc- 
cession. He was a man of undoubted integrity and great 
political sagacity; he had a handsome face, although he 
had lost one of his eyes by an accident when riding, and 
he had a stately presence. His gifts and graces were 
said to have so much attracted the admiration of Queen 
Mary that if she had outlived the King she would prob- 
ably have married Shrewsbury. The condition of the 
political world around him had impressed him with so 
little reverence for courts and cabinets, that he used to 
say if he had a son he would rather bring him up a cob- 
bler than a courtier, and a hangman than a statesman. 
Bolingbroke once kindly said of him, " I never knew a 
man so formed to please, and to gain upon the affections 
while challenging the esteem." 

Before there was time to get to any of the business of 
the council the doors were opened, and the Duke of Ar- 
gyll and the Duke of Somerset entered the room. The 
Duke of Argyll, soldier, statesman, orator, shrewd self- 
seeker, represented the Whigs of Scotland ; the honest, 
proud, pompous Duke of Somerset those of England. 
The two intruders, as they were assuredly regarded by 
the majority of those present, announced that they had 
heard the news of the Queen's danger, and that they felt 
themselves bound to hasten to the meeting of the council, 
although not summoned thither, in order that they might 
be able to afford advice and assistance. 

The Duke of Somerset was in many respects the most 
powerful nobleman in England. But all his rank, his 
dignity, and his influence, could not protect him against 
the ridicule and contempt which his feeble character, his 
extravagant pride, and his grotesquely haughty demean- 
or, invariably brought upon him. He was probably the 
most ridiculous man of his time; he had the pomp of an 
Eastern pasha without the grave dignity which Eastern 
manners confer. He was, like the pasha of a burlesque or 
an opera bouffe. His servants had to obey him by signs; 
he disdained to give orders by voice. His first wife was 
Elizabeth Percy, the virgin widow of Lord Ogle and Tom 
Thynne of Longleat, the beloved of Charles John Konigs- 
mark, the " Carrots " of Dean Swift. While she was Duch- 
ess of Somerset and Queen Anne's close friend, Swift, who 
hated her, hinted pretty broadly that she was privy to 
Konigsmark's plot to murder Tom Thynne, and the Duch- 
ess revenged herself by keeping the Dean out of the bish- 
opric of Hereford. When she died, Somerset married 
Lady Charlotte Finch, one of the "Black Funereal Finch- 
es," celebrated by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams. Once, 
when she tapped him on the shoulder with a fan, he re- 
buked her angrily: "My first wife was a Percy, and she 
never took such a liberty." When he had occasion to 
travel, all the roads on or near which he had to pass were 
scoured by a vanguard of outriders, whose business it was 
to protect him, not merely from obstruction and delay, but 
from the gaze of the vulgar herd who might be anxious to 
feast their eyes upon his gracious person. The statesmen 



14 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



of his own time, while they made use of him, seem to 
have vied with each other in protestations of their con- 
tempt for his abilities and his character. Swift declared 
that Somerset had not " a grain of sense of any kind." 
Mailborough several times professed an utter contempt 
for Somerset's abilities or discretion, and was indignant 
at the idea that he ever could have made use of such a 
man in any work requiring confidence or judgment. Yet 
Somerset, ridiculous as he was, came to be a personage of 
importance in the crisis now impending over England. 
He was, at all events, a man whose word could be trusted, 
and who, when he promised to take a certain course, would 
be sure to follow it. That very pride which made him 
habitually ridiculous raised him on great occasions above 
any suspicion of mercenary or personal views in politics. 
One of his contemporaries describes him as " so humor- 
some, proud, and capricious, "that he was rather a ministry 
spoiler than a ministry maker." In the present condition 
of things, however, he could be made use of for the purpose 
of making one ministry after spoiling another. When 
he carried his great personal influence over to the side 
of the Hanoverian accession, and joined with Argyll and 
with Shrewsbury, it must have been evident, to men like 
Bolingbroke at least, that the enterprises of the Jacobites 
would require rare good-fortune and marvellous energy to 
bring them to any success. 

Poetry and romance have shown to the world the most 
favorable side of the character of John Campbell, Duke of 
Argyll, who was then at least as powerful in Scotland as 
the Duke of Somerset in England. Pope describes him 
as 

Argyll, the State's whole thunder born to wield, 
And shake alike the senate and the field. 

Scott has drawn a charming picture of him in the "Heart 
of Mid-Lothian" as the patriotic Scotchman, whose heart 
must " be cold as death can make it when it does not warm 
to the tartan " — the kind and generous protector of Jeanie 
Deans. Argyll was a man of many gifts. He was a sol- 
dier, a statesman, and an orator. He had charged at Ram- 
ilies and Oudenarde, had rallied a shrinking column at 
Malplaquet, and served in the sieges of Ostend and Lille 
and Ghent. His eloquence in the House of Lords is said 
to have combined the freshness of youth, the strength of 
manhood, and the wisdom of old age. Lord Hervey, who 
is not given to praise, admits that Argyll was "gallant, 
and a good officer, with very good parts, and much more 
reading and knowledge than generally falls to the share 
of a man educated a soldier, and born to so great a title 
and fortune." But Hervey also says that Argyll was 
" haughty, passionate, and peremptory," and it cannot be 
doubted that he was capable of almost any political ter- 
giversation, or even treachery, which could have served 
his purpose ; and his purpose was always his own person- 
al interest. He changed his opinions with the most un- 
scrupulous promptitude ; he gave an opinion one way and 
acted another way without hesitation, and without a blush. 
He was always equal to the emergency ; he had the full 
courage of his non-convictions. He was the grandson of 
that Argyll whose last sleep before his execution is the 
subject of Mr. Ward's well-known painting ; his great- 
grandfather, too, gave up his life on the scaffold. He did 
not want any of the courage of his ancestors ; but he was 
likely to take care that his advancement should not be to 
the block or the gallows. At such a moment as this which 
we are now describing his adhesion and his action were 
of inestimable value to the Hanoverian cause. 

When these two great peers entered the council-cham- 
ber a moment of perplexity and confusion followed. Bo- 
lingbroke and Ormond had probably not even yet a full 
understanding of the meaning of this dramatic perform- 
ance, and what consequences it was likely to insure. While 
they sat silent, according to some accounts, the Duke of 
Shrewsbury arose, and gravely thanking the Whig peers 
for their courtesy in attending the council, accepted their 



co-operation in the name of all the others present. They 
took their places at the council-table, and St. John and 
Ormond must have begun to feel that all was over. The 
intrusion of the Whig peers was a daring and a signifi- 
cant step in itself, but when the Duke of Shrewsbury 
welcomed their appearance and accepted their co-opera- 
tion, it was clear to the Jacobites that all was part of a 
prearranged scheme, to which resistance would now be 
in vain. The new visitors to the council called for the 
reports of the royal physician, and having received and 
read them, suggested that the Duke of Shrewsbury 
should be recommended to the Queen as Lord High 
Treasurer. St. John did not venture to resist the propo- 
sal ; he could only sit with as much appearance of compo- 
sure as he was enabled to maintain, and accept the sug- 
gestion of his enemies. A deputation of the peers, with 
the Duke of Shrewsbury among them, at once sought and 
obtained an interview with the dying Queen. She gave 
the Lord High Treasurer's staff into Shrewsbury's hand, 
and bade him, it is said, in that voice of singular sweet- 
ness and melody which was almost her only charm, to 
use it for the good of her people. 

The office of Lord High Treasurer is now always put 
into what is called commission ; its functions are man- 
aged by several ministers, of whom the First Lord of the 
Treasury is one, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
another. In all recent times the First Lord of the Treas- 
ury has usually been Prime-minister, and his office there- 
fore corresponds fairly enough with that which was called 
the office of Lord High Treasurer in earlier days. It 
was clear that when the Duke of Shrewsbury became 
Lord High Treasurer at such a junction he would stand 
firmly by the Protestant succession, and would oppose 
any kind of scheming in the cause of the exiled Stuarts. 

Some writers near to that time, and Mr. Lecky among 
more recent historians, are of opinion that it was not 
either of the intruding dukes who proposed that Shrews- 
bury should be appointed Treasurer. Mr. Lecky is even 
of opinion that it may have been Bolingbroke himself 
who made the suggestion. That seems to us extremely 
probable. All accounts agree in confirming the idea that 
Bolingbroke was taken utterly by surprise when the 
great Whig dukes entered the council-chamber. The 
moment he saw that Shrewsbury welcomed them he 
probably made up his mind to the fact that an entirely 
new condition of things had arisen, and that all his pre- 
vious calculations were upset. He was not a man to re- 
main long dumfounded by any change in the state of 
affairs. It would have been quite consistent with his 
character and his general course of action if, when he 
saw the meaning of the crisis, he had at once resolved 
to make the best of it and to try to keep himself still at 
the head of affairs. In that spirit nothing is more likely 
than that he should have pushed himself to the front 
once more, and proposed, as Lord High Treasurer, the 
man whom, but for the sudden and overwhelming press- 
ure brought to bear upon him, he would have tried to 
keep out of all influence and power at such a moment. 

The appointment of the Duke of Shrewsbury settled 
the question. The crisis was virtually over. The Whig 
statesmen at once sent out summonses to all the mem- 
bers of the Privy Council living anywhere near London. 
That same afternoon another meeting of the council 
was held. Somers himself, the great Whig leader whose 
services had made the party illustrious in former reigns, 
and whose fame sheds a lustre on them even to this hour 
— Somers, aged, infirm, decaying as he w r as in body and 
in mind — hastened to attend the summons, and to lend 
his strength and his authority to the measures on which 
liis colleagues had determined. The council ordered the 
concentration of several regiments in and near London. 
They recalled troops from Ostend, and sent a fleet to sea. 
General Stanhope, a soldier and statesman of whom we 
shall hear more, was prepared, if necessary, to take pos- 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



15 



session of the Tower and clap the leading Jacobites into 
it, to obtain possession of all the outports, and, in short, 
to act as military dictator, authorized to anticipate revo- 
lution and to keep the succession safe. In a word, the 
fate of the Stuarts was sealed. Bolingbroke was check- 
mated ; the Chevalier de St. George would have put to 
sea in vain. Marlborough was on his way to England, 
and there was nothing to do but to wait till the breath 
was out of Queen Anne's body, and proclaim George the 
Elector King of England. 

The time of waiting was not long. Anne sank into 
death on August 1, 1714, and the heralds proclaimed 
that "the high and mighty Prince George, Elector of 
Brunswick and Liineburg, is, by the death of Queen 
Anne of blessed memory, become our lawful and right- 
ful liege lord, King of Great Britain, France, and Ire- 
land, Defender of the Faith." This " King of France " 
was lucky enough not to come to his throne until the 
conclusion of a long war against the King of France who 
lived in Versailles. The "Defender of the Faith" was 
just now making convenient arrangements that his mis- 
tresses should follow him as speedily as possible when 
he should have to take his unwilling way to his new 
dominions. 

On August 3d Bolingbroke wrote a letter to Dean Swift, 
in which he says, " The Earl of Oxford was removed on 
Tuesday ; the Queen died on Sunday. What a world 
this is, and how does fortune banter us !" In other 
words, Bolingbroke tells Swift that full success seemed 
within his grasp on Tuesday, and was suddenly torn 
away from him on Sunday. But the most characteristic 
part of the letter is a passage which throws a very blaze 
of light over the unconquerable levity of the man. "I 
have lost all by the death of the Queen but my spirit ; 
and, I protest to you, I feel that increase upon me. The 
Whigs are a pack of Jacobites ; that shall be the cry in 
a month, if you please." No sooner is one web of in- 
trigue swept away than Bolingbroke sets to work to 
weave a new one on a different plan. Nothing can sub- 
due those high animal spirits ; nothing can physic that 
selfishness ; nothing can fix that levity to a recognition 
of the realities of things. Bolingbroke has not a word 
now about the cause of the Stuarts ; for the moment he 
cannot think of that. His new scheme is to make out 
that his enemies were, after all, the true Jacobites ; he 
will checkmate them that way — "in a month, if you 
please." On the very same day Mr. John Barber, the 
printer of some of Swift's pamphlets, afterwards an Al- 
derman and Lord Mayor, writes to Swift and tells him, 
speaking of Bolingbroke, that " when my lord gave me 
the letter" (to be enclosed to Swift) " he said he hoped 
you would come up and help to save the constitution, 
which, with a little good management, might be kept in 
Tory hands." The chill, clear common-sense of Swift's 
answer might have impressed even Bolingbroke, but 
did not. 

One among the Tories, indeed, would have had the cour- 
age to forestall the Whigs and their proclamation. This 
one man was a priest, and not a soldier. Atterbury, the 
eloquent Bishop of Rochester, came to Bolingbroke, and 
urged him to proclaim King James at Charing Cross, of- 
fering himself to head a procession in his lawn sleeves if 
Bolingbroke would only act on his advice. But for the 
moment Bolingbroke could only complain of fortune's ban- 
ter, and plan out new intrigues for the restoration, not 
of the Stuarts, but of the Tory party — that is to say, of 
himself. His refusal wrung from Atterbury the declara- 
tion that the best cause in England was lost for want of 
spirit. 

Parliament assembled, and on August 5th the Commons 
were summoned to the Bar of the House of Lords, and the 
Lord Chancellor made a speech in the name of the Lords 
of the Regency. He told the Lords and Commons that 
the Privy Council appointed by George, Elector of Han- 



over, had proclaimed that prince as the lawful and right- 
ful sovereign of these realms. Both Houses agreed to send 
addresses to the King, expressing their duty and affection, 
and the House of Commons passed a bill granting to his 
Majesty the same civil list as that which Queen Anne had 
enjoyed, but with additional clauses for the payment of ar- 
rears due to the Hanoverian troops who had been in the 
service of Great Britain. The Lord Chancellor, who had 
just addressed the House of Lords and the Commoners 
standing at the Bar, was himself a remarkable illustration 
of the politics and the principles of that age. Simon Har- 
court had been Lord Chancellor in the later years of 
Queen Anne's life. His appointment ended with her 
death, but he was re-appointed by the Lords of the Re- 
gency in the name of the new sovereign, and he was again 
sworn in as Lord Chancellor on August 3, 1714, " in Court 
at his house aforesaid, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Anno Primo, 
Georgii Regis.'''' He was one of the Lords Justices by 
virtue of his office, and as such had already taken the 
oath of allegiance to the new sovereign, and of abjuration 
to James. Lord Harcourt had been throughout his whole 
career not only a very devoted Tory, but in later years a 
positive Jacobite. He was a highly accomplished speaker, 
a man of great culture, and a lawyer of considerable, if 
not pre-eminent, attainments. He was still comparatively 
young for a public man of such position. Born in 1660, 
he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1675, was ad- 
mitted to the Inner Temple in 1676, and called to the Bar 
in 1683. He became member of Parliament for Abing- 
don in 1690, and soon rose to great distinction in the 
House of Commons as well as at the Bar. He conducted 
the impeachment of the great Lord Somers, and was 
knighted and made Solicitor -General by Anne in 1702. 
He became Attorney-General shortly after. He conducted, 
in 1703, the prosecution of Defoe for his famous satirical 
tract, "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters." Har- 
court threw himself into the prosecution with the fervor 
and the bitterness of a sectary and a partisan. He made 
a most vehement and envenomed speech against Defoe ; 
he endeavored to stir up every religious prejudice and 
passion in favor of the prosecution. Coke had scarcely 
shown more of the animosity of a partisan in prosecuting 
Raleigh than Simon Harcourt did in prosecuting Defoe. 
In 1709-10 Harcourt was the leading counsel for Sachev- 
erell, and received the Great Seal in 1710, becoming, as the 
phrase then was, " Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of Great 
Britain." A whole year, wanting only a few days, passed 
before he was raised to the peerage as Lord Harcourt. 
He acted as Speaker of the House of Lords before he be- 
came a peer and a member of the House, and even had 
on one occasion to express on behalf of the Peers their 
thanks to Lord Peterborough for his services in Spain. In 
1713 he became Lord Chancellor of England. During 
all this time he had been a most devoted adherent of the 
Stuarts, and during the later period he was an open and 
avowed Jacobite. He had opposed strongly the oaths of 
abjuration which now, as Lord Chief Justice, he had both 
taken and administered. Almost his first conspicuous act 
as a member of Parliament was to protest against the 
Bill which required the oath of abjuration of James and 
his descendants, and he maintained consistently the same 
principles and the same policy till the death of Queen 
Anne. There can be no doubt that if just then any move- 
ment had been made on behalf of the Stuarts, with the 
slightest chance of success, Lord Chancellor Harcourt 
would have thrown himself into it heart and soul. Nev- 
ertheless, he took the oath of allegiance and the oath of 
abjuration; he professed to be a loyal subject of the King, 
whose person and principles he despised and detested, and 
he swore to abjure forever all adhesion to that dynasty 
which with all his heart he would have striven, if he could, 
to restore to the throne of England. Lord Campbell, in 
his " Lives of the Lord Chancellors," says of Harcourt, " I 
do not consider his efforts to restore the exiled Stuarts 



10 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES: 



morally inconsistent with the engagements into which he 
had entered to the existing Government; and although 
there were loud complaints against him for at lasl sending 
in his adhesion to the House of Hanover, it should be rec- 
ollected thai the cause of the Stuarts had then become 
desperate, and thai instead of betraying lie did everything 
in Ids power to screen his old associates." The cause of 
the Stuarts had not become, oven then, so utterly desper- 
ate as to prevenl many brave nun from laying down their 
lives for it. Thirty years had to pass away before the 
lasl blow was struck for thai cause of the Stuarts which 
Harcourt by solemn oath abjured forever. Such credit as 
lie is entitled to have, because he protected rather than 

betrayed his old associates, we are free to give him, and 

it stands a significant illustration of the political moralil \ 
of the time that such comparative credit is all that his 
enthusiastic biographer ventures to claim for him. 

The House of Lords had then two hundred and seven 
members, many of whom, being Catholics, were not per- 
mitted to take any part in public business. That number 
of Peers is about in just proportion to the population of 
England as it was then when compared with the Peers 

and the populate f England at present. In the House 

of Commons there were at the same time five hundred 
and fifty-eight members. England sent, in five hundred 
and thirteen, and Scotland, which had lately accepted the 
union, returned forty-five. It need hardly 'he said that at 
that time Ireland had her own Parliament, and sent no 
members to Westminster. A great number of the county 
family names in the House of Commons were just the 
same as those which we si'c at present. The Stanhopes, 
the Lowthers, the Lawsons, the Herberts, the Harcourts, 
the Cowpers, the Fitzwilliams, the Cecils, the Grevilles; 
all these, and many others, were represented in Parlia- 
ment then as they are represented in Parliament now. 
Then, as more lately, the small boroughs had the credit 
of returning, mostly of course through family influence, 

men of eminence other than political, who happened to 
Bit in the House of Commons. Steele sat for Stookbridge, 

in "Southampton County," as Hampshire was then al- 
ways called, Addison for Malmesbury, Prior for East 
Grinstead. There were no reports of the debates, nor 
printed lists of the divisions. Questions of foreign pol- 
icy were sometimes discussed with doors strict ly closed 
against all strangers, just as similar questions are occa- 
sionally, and not infrequently, discussed in the Senate of 
the United States at present. The pamphlet supplied in 
some measure the place of the newspaper report and the 
newspaper leading article. Some twelve years later than 
this the brilliant pen id' Bolingbroke, who, if he had lived 
at a period nearer to our own, might have been an unri- 
valled writer of leading articles, was able to obtain for 
the series of pamphlets called "The Craftsman" a circu- 
lation greater than that ever enjoyed by the /Spectator. 

Pulteney co-operated with him for a, time in the work. 
Steele, as we have said, had heen expelled from the House 
id' Commons tor his pamphlet "The Crisis." 'Idle carica- 
ture which played so important a part in political contro- 
versy all through the reigns of the Georges had just come 
into recognized existence. ( lountless caricatures of Boling- 
broke, of Walpole, of Shrewsbury, of Marlborough, began 
to fly about London. Scurrilous [ballads were of course in 
great demand, nor was t he supply inadequate to the demand. 
One of the most SUCCeSStul Of these compositions de- 
scrihed the return of the Duke of Marlborough to Lon- 
don. On the very day of the ( L >ueen's death Marlborough 
landed at Dover. He came quickly on to London, and 
there, according to the descriptions given by his admirers, 
he was received like a restored sovereign returning to 
his throne. A procession of two hundred gentlemen on 
horseback met him on the road to London, and the pro- 
cession was joined shortly after by a long train of car- 
riages. As he entered London the enthusiasm deepened 
with every fool of the way ; the streets were lined with 



Crowds of applauding admirers. Marlborough's carriage 
broke down near Temple Bar, and he had to exchange it 
for another. The little incident was only a new cause 
for demonstrations of enthusiasm. It was a fresh delight 
to see the hero more nearly than he could be seen through 
his carriage-windows. It was something to have delayed 
him for a moment, and to have compelled him to stand 
among the crowd of those who were pressing round to 
express their homage. This was the Whig description. 
According to Tory accounts Marlborough was more hissed 
than huzzaed, and at Temple Bar the hissing was loudest. 
The work of the historian would be comparatively easy if 
eye-witnesses could only agree as to any, even the most 
important, facts. 

Enthusiastic Whig pamphleteers called upon their coun- 
trymen to love and honor their invincible hero, and de- 
clared that the wretch would be esteemed a disgrace to 
humanity, and should be transmitted to posterity with 
infamy, who would dare to use his tongue or pen against 
him. Such wretches, however, were' found, and did not 
seem in the least to dread the infamy which was prom- 
ised them. The scurrilous ballad of which we have al- 
ready spoken was by one Neil Ward, a publican and 
rhymester, and it pictured tin.' entry of the duke in 
verses after the fashion of Hudibras. It depicted the 
procession as made up of 

Frightful troops of thin-jawed zealots, 
Ciirs'd enemies to kings and prelates ; 

and declared that those "champions of religious errors" 
made London seem 

As if the prince of terrors 

Was coming with liis dismal train 

To plague the city once again. 

The memory of what the Plague had done in London was 
still green enough to give bitter force to this allusion. 

.Marlborough could have afforded to despise what Hot- 
spur calls the " metre-ballad-mongers," but his pride re- 
ceived a check and chill not easily to lie got over. When 
fairly rid of his enthusiastic followers and admirers he 
went to the House of Lords almost at once, and took the 
oaths ; but he did not remain there. In truth, he soon 
found himself bitterly disappointed ; not with the people 
— they could not have been more enthusiastic than they 
were — but with the new ruling power. Immediately af- 
ter the death of the Queen, and even before the proclama- 
tion of the new sovereign had taken place, the Hanoverian 
resident in London handed to the Privy Council a letter 
from George, in George's own handwriting, naming the 
nun who were to act in combination with the seven great 

officers of State as lords justices. The power to make 
this nomination was provided for George by the Regency 

Act. This document contained the names of eighteen of 
the principal Whig peers; the Duke of Shrewsbury, the 
Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Argyll were among 
them; so, too, were Lords Cow per, Halifax, and Towns- 
hend. It was noted with wonder thai the illustrious 
name of Somers did not appear on the list, nor did that of 
Marlborough, nor that of Marlborough's son-in-law, Lord 
Sunderland. It is likely that the omission of these names 
was only made in the first instance because George and 
his advisers were somewhat afraid of his getting into the 
hands of a sort of dictatorship — a dictatorship in commis- 
sion, as it might he called, made up of three or four influ- 
ential men. The King afterwards hastened to show every 
;il l en lion to Marlborough and Somers and Sunderland, and 
he soon restored Marlborough to all his public offices. 
Pill ( reorge seems to have had a profound and a very w ell- 
just 'died distrust of Marlborough. Though he honored 
him with marks of respect and attention, though he re- 
stored him to the great position he had held in the State, 
yet the King never allowed Marlborough to suppose that 
he really had regained his former influence in court and 
political life. Marlborough was shelved, and he already 
knew it, and bitterly complained of it. 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



n 



CHAPTER IV. 



T II k k i n <; c o si us. 



"The ol<l town of Hanover," says Thackeray, "must 
look si ill pretty much as in the time when George Louis 
left it. Tin' Hardens ami pavilions of Herrenhausen are 
scarce changed since 'the day wlwn the stout old Elec- 
tress Sophia fell down in her last walk there, preceding 
but by a few weeks to the tomb James the Second's 
daughter, whose death made way for the Brunswick 
Stuarts in England. . . . You may see at Herrenhausen 
the very rustic theatre in which the Platens danced and 
performed masks and sang before the Elector and his 
sons. There are the very fauns and dryads of stone still 
glimmering through the branches, still grinning and pip- 
ing their ditties of no tone, as in the days when painted 
nymphs hung garlands round them, appeared under their 
leafy arcades with gilt crooks, guiding rams with gilt 
horns, descended from 'machines' in the guise of Diana 
or Minerva, and delivered immense allegorical compli- 
ments to the princes returned home from the campaign." 
Herrenhausen, indeed, is changed but little since those 
days of which Thackeray speaks. But although not many 
\ ears have passed since Thackeray went to visit Hanover 
before delivering his lectures on "The Four Georges," 
Hanover itself has undergone much alteration. If one 
of the George's could now return to his ancestral capital 
lie would indeed be bewildered at the great new squares, 
the rows of tall vast shops and warehouses, the spacious 
railway-station, penetrated to every corner at night by 
the keen electric light. But in passing from Hanover to 
Herrenhausen one goes back, in a short drive, from the 
days of the Emperor William of Germany to the days 
of George the Elector. Herrenhausen, the favorite resi- 
dence of the Electors of Hanover, is but a short distance 
from the capital. Thackeray speaks of it as an ugly place, 
and it certainly has not many claims to the picturesque. 
But it is full of a certain curious half-melancholy inter- 
est, and well fitted to be the cradle and the home of a 
decaying Hanoverian dynasty. In its galleries one may 
spend many an hour, not, unprofitably, in studying the 
faces of all the men and women who are famous, noto- 
rious, or infamous in connection with the history of Han- 
over. The story of that dynasty has more than one epi- 
sode not unlike that of the unfortunate Sophia Dorothea 
and Ki'inigsmark, her lover. A good many grim legends 
haunt the place and give interest to some of the faces,, 
otherwise insipid enough, which look out of the heavy 
frames and the formal court-dresses of the picture-gallery. 

On the evening of August 5, 1714, four days after 
Queen Anne's death, Lord Clarendon, the lately appointed 
English Minister at the Court of Hanover, set out for the 
palace of Herrenhausen to bear to the new King of Great 
Britain the tidings of Queen Anne's death. About two 
o'clock in the morning he entered the royal apartments 
of the ungenial and sleepy George, and, kneeling, did 
homage to him as King of Great Britain. George took 
the announcement of his new rank without even a sem- 
blance of gratification, He had made up his mind to en- 
dure it, and thai was all. He was too stolid, or lazy, or 
sincere to affect the slightest personal interest in the news. 
Re lingered in Hanover as long as he decently could, and 
sauntered lor many a day through the prim, dull, and 
orderly walks of Herrenhausen. lie behaved very much 
in the fashion of the convict in Prior's poem, who, when 
the cart was ready and the halter adjusted, 

Often took leave but seemed loath to depart. 

August :;i st had arrived before George began his journey 
to England. But he did one or two good-natured things 
before leaving Hanover; he ordered the abolition of cer- 
tain duties on provisions, and he had the insolvent debt- 
ors throughout the Electorate discharged from custody. 
On September 5th he reached the Hague, and here another 

2 



Stoppage took place. The exertion of travelling from 
Hanover to the Hague had Keen so great that George ap- 
parently required a respite from September 5th until the 
Kith. On the 16th he embarked, and reached Greenwich 
two days after, lie was accompanied to England by his 
two leading favorites — the ladies whose charms we have 
already described. For many days after his arrival in 
London the King did little hut lament his exile from his 
beloved Herrenhausen, and tell every one he met how 
cordially he disliked England, its people, and its ways. 
Fortunately, perhaps, in this respect, for the popularity 
of his Majesty, George's audience was necessarily limited. 
He spoke no English, and hardly any of those who sur- 
rounded him could speak German, while some of his min- 
isters did not even speak French. Sir Robert Walpole 
tried to get on with him by talking Latin. Even the 
English oysters George could not abide ; he grumbled long 
at their queer taste, their wanl of flavor, and it was some 
time before his devoted attendants discovered that, their 
monarch liked stale oysters with a good strong rankness 
about, them. No time was lost, when this important dis- 
covery had been made, in procuring oysters to the taste 
of the King, and one of George's objections to the throne 
of England w r as easily removed. 

There was naturally great curiosity to see the King, 
and a, writer of the time gives an amusing account of the 
efforts made to obtain a sight of him. "A certain per- 
son has paid several guineas for the benefit of Cheapsidc 
conduit, and another lias almost given twenty years' pur- 
chase for a shed in Stocks Market. Some lay out great 
sums in shop-windows, others sell lottery tickets to hire 
cobblers' Stalls, and here and (here a vintner has received 
earnest for the use of his sign-post. King Charles the 
Second's horse at the aforesaid market, is to carry double, 
and his Majesty at Charing Cross is to ride between two 
draymen. Some have made interest to climb chimneys, 
and others to be exalted to the air)- station of a steeple." 

The princely pageant which people were so eager to 
see lives si ill in a print issued by "Tim. Jordan and Tho. 
Bakenwell at Ye Golden Lion in Fleet Si reel." We are 
thus gladdened by a sight of the splendid procession wind- 
ing its way through Si. James's Park to St. James's Palace. 
There are musketeers and trumpeters on horseback ; there 
arc courtly gentlemen on horse and afoot, and great lum- 
bering, gilded, gaudily-bedizened carriages with four and 
six steeds, and more trumpeters, on foot this lime, and 
pursuivants and heralds — George was fond of heralds, and 
created two of his own, Hanover and Gloucester- and 
then flu 1 royal carriage, with ils eight prancing horses, and 
the Elector of Hanover and King of England inside, with 
his hand to his heart, and still more soldiers following, 
both horse ami foot, and, of course, a loyal populace every- 
where waving their three-cornered hats and huzzaing with 
all their might. 

The day of the entry was not without its element of 
tragedy. In the crowd Colonel Cliiidleigh called Mr. 
Charles Aldworth, M.P. for New Windsor, a Jacobite. 
There was a quarrel, (he gentlemen went to Marylebone 
Fields, exchanged a few passes, and Mr. Aldworth was al- 
most immediately killed. This was no greal wonder, for 
we learn, in a letter from Lord Berkeley of Si ration, pre. 
served in the Went worl h Papers, describing the duel, that 
Mr. Aldworth had such a weakness in his arms from child- 
hood that he could not stretch them out ; a fact, Lord 
Berkeley hints, by no means unknown to his adversary. 

Horace Walpole has left a description of King George 
which is worth citation. "The person of the King," he says, 
"is as perfect in my memory as if I saw him yesterday; 
it was that of an elderly man, rather pale, and exactly like 
his pictures ami coins ; not tall, of an aspect rather good 
than august, with a dark tic-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat 
and breeches of snuff-colored cloth, with stockings of the 
same color, and a blue ribbon over all." George was fond 
of heavy dining and heavy drinking. He often dined at 



18 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



Sir Robert. Walpole'e, at Richmond Hill, where he used 
to drink so much punch thai even the Duchess of Kendal 
endeavored to restrain him, and received in return some 
coarse admonition in German. He was shy and reserved 
in general, and he detested all the troublesome display of 
royalty. He hated going to the theatre in slate, and lie 
did not even care to show himself in front of the royal 
box ; he preferred to sit in another and less conspicuous 
box with the Duchess of Kendal and Lady Walsingham. 
<)n the whole, it would seem as if the inclination of the 

English people for the Hanoverian dynasty was about to 

be tried by the severest test that fate could well ordain. 
A dull, stolid, ami profligate king, fond of drink and of low 
conversation, without dignity of appearance or manner, 
without svinpathy of any kind with the English people and 

English ways, ami without the slightest knowledge of the 
English language, was suddenly thrust upon the people 
and proclaimed their king. Fortunately for the Hanove- 
rian dynasty, the English people, as a. whole, had grown 
into a mood of comparative indifference as to who should 

rule them so long as they Were let alone. It was impossi- 
ble that a Strong feeling of loyalty to any House should 
burn just then in the breast, of the great majority of the 

English people. Those who were devoted to the Stuarts 

and those who detested the Stuarts felt strongly on the 

Subject this way or that, and they would therefore ad- 
mire 1 or detest King George according to their previously 
aoquired political principles. But to the ordinary Eng- 
lishman it only seemed that England had lately been try- 
ing a variety of political systems and a variety of rulers ; 
that one seemed to succeed hardly better than the Other ; 

that so long as no great breakdown in the system took 
place, it mattered Little whether a Stuart or a Brunswick 
was in temporary possession of the throne. Within a 
comparatively short space of time the English Parliament 
had deposed Charles the First; the Protectorate had been 
tried under Cromwell ; the Restoration had heen brought 
about by the adroitness of Monk ; .lames the Second, a 
Catholic, hail come to the throne, and had been driven oil' 
the throne by William the Third ; William had estab- 
lished a new dynasty and a new system, which was no 
sooner established than it had to he succeeded by the 
introduction to the throne of one of the daughters of Un- 
displaced House of Stuart. England had not had time 

to become attached, or even reconciled, to any of these 
succeeding rulers, and the English people in general — the 

English people outside the Circle of courts and Parlia- 
ment and politics were well satisfied when George came 
to the throne to let any one wear the crown who did not 
make himself and his system absolutely intolerable to the 
nation. 

The old-fashioned romantic principle- of personal loyalty, 
unconditional loyalty — the loyalty of Divine right — was 
already languishing unto death. It was now seen for the 
last time in effective contrast with what, we may call the 
modern principle of loyalty. The modern principle of 
loyalty to a sovereign is that which, having decided in fa- 
vor of monarchical government and of an hereditary suc- 
cession, resolves to abide by that choice, and for the sake 
of the principle and of the country to pay all respect and 
homage to the person of I he chosen ruler. But the loyaltj 
which still clungtOthe fading fortunes of the Stuarts was 
very different from this, and came into direct contrast with 
the feelings shown by the majority of the people of Eng- 
land towards the House of Hanover. Though faults and 
weaknesses beyond number, Weaknesses which were even 
worse t han act ual faults, tainted I he character and corroded 

the moral fibre of every successive Stuart prince, the dev- 
otees of personal loyalty still clung with sentiment and 
with passion to the surviving representatives of the fallen 
dynasty. Poets and halladists, singers in the streets and 
singers on the mountain-side, were, even in these early 
days of George the First, inspired with songs of loyal 
homage in favor of the son of James the Second. Men 



and women in thousands, not only among the wild ro- 
mantic hills of Scotland, but in prosaic North of England 
towns, and yet more prosaic London streets and alleys, 
were ready, if the occasion oll'ered, to die for the Stuart 
cause. Despite the evidence of their own senses, men 
and women would still endow any representative of the 
Stuarts with all the virtues and talents and graces that 
might become an ideal prince of romance. No one 
thought in this way of the successors of William the 
Third. No one had had any particular admiration for 
Queen Anne, either as a sovereign or as a woman ; no- 
body pretended to feel any thrill of sentimental emotion 

towards portly, stolid, sensual George the First. About 

the King, personally, hardly anybody cared anything. 
The mass id' the English people who accepted him and 
adhered to him did so because they understood that he 
represented a certain quiet homely principle in politics 
which would secure tranquillity and stability to the conn- 
try. They did not ask of him that be should be noble 
or gifted or dignified, or even virtuous. They asked of 
him two things in especial : first, that he would maintain 
a stead)' system of government ; and next, that he would 
in general let the country alone. This is the feeling 
which must be taken into account if we would under- 
stand bow it came to pass that the English people so con- 
tentedly accepted a sovereign like George the First. The 
explanation is not to be found merely in the fact that the 
Stuarts, as a race, had discredited themselves hopelessly 
with the moral sentiment of the people of England. The 
very worst of the Stuarts, Charles the Second, was not 
any worse as regards moral character than George the 
First, or than some of the Georges who followed him. 
In education and in mental capacity he was far superior 
to any of the Georges. There were many qualities in 
( 'harlcs the Second which, if his fatal love of ease and of 
amusement could have been kept under control, might 
have made him a successful sovereign, and which, were 
be in private life, would undoubtedly have made him an 
eminent man. Put the truth is that the old feeling of 
blind unconditional homage to the sovereign was dying 
out; it was dying of inanition and old age and natural 
decay. Other and stronger forces in political thought 
were coming up to jostle it aside, even before its death- 
hour, and to occupy its place. A king was to be in Eng- 
land, for the future, a respect ed and honored chief mag- 
istrate appointed for life and to hereditary office. This 
new condition of things influenced the feelings and con- 
duet of hundreds of thousands of persons who were not 

themselves conscious of the change. This was one great 
reason why George the First was so easily accepted by 
the country. The king was in future to be a business 
king, and not a king of sentiment and romance. 



wi 



CHAPTER V. 

IAT TUK IvINIi CAME TO. 



The population of these islands at the close of the 
reign of Queen Anne was probably not more than one- 
fifth of its present amount. It is not easy to arrive at a 
precise knowledge with regard to tile number of the in- 
habitants of* England at that time, because there was no 
census taken until 1801. We have, therefore, to be con- 
tent with calculations founded on the number of houses 
that paid certain taxes, and on the register of deaths. 
This is of course not a very exact way of getting at the 
result, but it enables us to form a tolerably fair general 
estimate. According to these calculations, then, tlie pop- 
ulation of England and Wales together was something 
like five millions and a half; the population of Ireland 
at the same time appears to have been about two mill- 
ions; that of Scotland little more than one. Put the 
distribution of the population of these countries was very 
different then from that of the present day. Now the 
great cities and towns form the numerical strength of 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



19 



England and Scotland at least, but at that time the agri- 
cultural districts had a much larger proportion of the 
population ihan the towns could boast of. London was 
then considered a vast and enormous city, but it was only 
a hamlet when compared with the London which we 
know. Even then it absorbed mure than one-tenth of 
the whole population of England and Wales. At the be- 
ginning of the reign of King George the First, London 
had a population of aboul seven hundred thousand, and 
it is a fact worthy of notice, that rapidly as the popula- 
tion of England has grown between that time and this, 
the growth of the metropolis has been even greater ill 
proportion. The City and Westminster were, at the be- 
ginning of George's reign, and for long after, two distinct, 
ami separate towns; between them still lay many wide 
spaces on which men were only beginning to build 
houses. Fashion was already moving westward in the 
metropolis, obeying that curious impulse which seems to 
prevail in all modern cities, and which makes the West 
End as eagerly sought alter in Paris, in Edinburgh, and 
in New York, as in London. The life of London cen- 
tred in St. Paul's and the Exchange ; that, of Westmin- 
ster in the Court and the Houses of Parliament. All 
around the old Houses of Parliament were lanes, squares, 
Btreets, and gate-ways covering the wide spaces ami broad 
thoroughfares with which we arc familiar. Between 
Parliament Buildings and the two churches of St.Peter 
and Si. Margaret ran a narrow, densely crowded street, 
known as St. Margaret's bane. The spot where Parlia- 
ment Street now opens into Bridge Street was part of an 
uninterrupted row of houses running down to the water- 
gate by the river. The market-house of the old Wool- 
len Market stood just where Westminster Bridge begins. 
The Parliament Houses themselves are as much changed 
as their surroundings. St. Stephen's Gallery now occu- 
pies the site of St. Stephen's Chapel, where the Commons 
used to sit. Westminster Hall had rows of little shops 
or booths ranged all along each wall inside; they had 
been there for generations, ami they certainly did not 
add either to the beauty or the safety of the ancient hall. 
In the early part of the seventeenth century sonic of them 
took fire and came near to laying in ashes one of the old- 
est occupied buildings in the world. Luckily, however, 
the tire was put out with slight damage, but the danger- 
ous little shops were suffered to remain then and for long 
after. 

The Lesser London of that day lives for us in contem- 
porary engravings, in the pages of the Spectator and the 
Toiler, in the poems of Swift ami Pope, in the pictures of 
Hogarth. Hogarth's men and women belong indeed to a 
later generation than the generation which Bolingbroke 
dazzled, and Marlborough deceived, and Arbuthnot satir- 
ized, and Steele made merry over. But it is only the men 
and women who are different ; the background remains 
the same. New actors have taken the parts ; the cos- 
tumes are somewhat altered, but the scenes are scarcely 
changed. There may be a steeple more or a sign-board 
less in the streets that Hogarth drew than there were 
when Addison walked them, but practically they are the 
same, and remained the same for a still later generation. 
Maps of the time show us how curiously small London 
was. There is open country to the north, just beyond 
Bloomsbury Square ; Sadler's Wells is out in the. country, 
so is St. Paneras, so is Tottenham Court, so is Maryle- 
bonc. At the east Stepney lies far away, a distant ham- 
let. Beyond Hanover Square to the west stretch fields 
again, where Tyburn Road became the road to Oxford. 
There is very little of London south of the river. 

The best part of the political and social life of this 
small London was practically lived in the still smaller area 
of St. James's, a term which generally includes rather 
more than is contained within the strict limits of St. 
James's parish. If some Jacobite gentleman or loyal 
Hanoverian courtier of the year 171+ could revisit to-day 



the scenes in which lie schemed and quarrelled, ho would 
find himself among the familiar names of strangely unfa- 
miliar places. St. James's Park indeed has not altered 
out of all recognition since the days when Puke Belair 
and my Lady Betty and my Lady Rattle walked the Mall 
bet ween the hours of twelve and two, and quoted from 
Congreve about laughing at the great world and the 
small. There were avenues of trees then as now. In- 
stead of the ornamental water ran a long canal, populou 
with ducks, which joined a pond called — no one knows 
why — Rosamund's Pond. This pond was a favorite tryst- 
ing-place for happy lovers — "the sylvan deities and rural 
powers of the place, sacred and inviolable to love, often 
heard lovers' vows repeated by its streams and echoes" — 
and a convenient water for unhappy lovers to drown 
themselves in, if we may credit the Tatler. St. James's 
Palace and Marlborough House on its right are scarcely 
changed ; but to the left only Lord Godolphin's house 
lay between it and the pleasant, park where the deer wan- 
dered. Farther off, where Buckingham Palace now is, 
was Buckingham House. It was then a stately country 
mansion on the road to Chelsea, with semicircular wings 
and a sweep of iron railings enclosing a spacious court, 
where a fountain played round a Triton driving his sea- 
horses. On the roof stood statues of Mercury, Liberty, 
Secrecy, and Equity, and across the front ran an inscrip- 
tion in great, gold letters, "Sic Siti Lcetantur Lares." 
The household gods might well delight in so fair a spot 
and in the music of that "little wilderness full of black- 
birds and nightingales," which the bowl-playing Duke 
who built the house lovingly describes to his friend 
Shrewsbury. 

Most of the streets in the St. James's region bear the 
names they bore when King George first came to London. 
But it is only in name that they are unchanged. The 
Street of streets, St. James's Street, is metamorphosed in- 
deed since the days when grotesque signs swung over- 
head, and great gilt carriages lumbered up and down 
from the park, and the chairs of modish ladies crowded 
up the narrow thoroughfares. Splendid warriors, fresh 
from Flanders or the Rhine, clinked their courtly swords 
against the posts ; red-coated country gentlemen jostled 
their wondering way through the crowd; and the Whig 
and Tory beaux, with ruffles and rapiers, powder and per- 
fume, haunted the coffee-houses of their factions. Not a 
house of the old street remains as it was then ; not one of 
the panelled rooms in which minuets were danced by 
candle-light to the jingle of harpsichord and tinkle of 
spinet, where wits planned pamphlets and pointed epi- 
grams, where statesmen schemed the overthrow of minis- 
tries and even of dynasties, where flushed youth punted 
away its fortunes or drank away its senses, and staggered 
out, perhaps, through the little crowd of chairmen and 
link-boys clustered at the door, to extinguish its foolish 
flame in a duel at Leicester Fields. All that world is 
gone ; only the name of the street remains, as full in its 
way of memories and associations as the S. P. Q. R. at 
the head of a municipal proclamation in modern Rome. 

Tire streets off St. James's Street, too, retain their an- 
cient names, and nothing more — King Street, Ryder 
Street, York Street, Jermyn Street, the spelling of which 
seems to have puzzled last century writers greatly, for 
they wrote it "Jermyn," "Germain," "Germaine," and 
even " Germin." St. James's Church, Wren's handiwork, 
is all that remains from the age of Anne, with " the 
steeple," says Strypo, fondly, " lately finished with a line 
spire, which adds much splendor to this end of the town, 
and also serves as a landmark." Perhaps it sometimes 
served as a landmark to Richard Steele, reeling happily 
to the home in "Berry" Street where his beloved Pruc 
awaited him. St. James's Square has gone through many 
metamorphoses since it was first built in 1665, and called 
the Piazza. In 1714 there was a rectangular enclosure in 
the centre, with four passages at the sides, through which 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



the public could come and go as they pleased. In a later 
generation (he inhabitants railed the enclosure round, 
and set in the middle an oval basin of water, large 
enough to have a boat upon it. In old engravings we 
see people gravely punting about on the quaint little 
pond. The fulness of time filled in the pond, and set 
up King William the Third instead in the middle of a 
grassy circle. It would take too long to enumerate all 
the changes that our Georgian gentleman would find in 
the London of his day. Some few, however, are espe- 
cially worth recording. He would seek in vain for the 
"Pikadilly" he knew, with its stately houses and fair 
gardens. It was almost a country road to the left of St. 
James's Street, between tin.' Green Park and Hyde Park, 
with meadows ami the distant hills beyond. Going east- 
ward he would find that a Henrietta Si reel ami a King 
Street still led into Covent Garden; but the Covent Gar- 
den of his time was an open place, with a column and a 
sun-dial in (he middle. Handsome dwellings for persons 
of repute and quality stood on the north side over those 
arcades which were fondly supposed by Inigo Jones, who 
laid out the spot, to resemble the Piazza in Venice. Ini- 
go Jones built the church, too, which is to be seen in the 
" Morning" plate of Hogarth's "Four Times of the Day." 
This church was destroyed by fire in 1795, and was re- 
built in its present form by Hardwick. 

Charing Cross was still a narrow spot where three 
streets met; what is now Trafalgar Square was covered 
with houses and the royal mews. St. Martin's Church 
was not built by Gibbs for a dozen years later, in 1726. 
Soho and Seven Dials were fashionable neighborhoods; 
Mis. Theresa Cornelys's house of entertainment, of which 
we hear so much from the writers of the time of Anne, 
was considered to be most fashionably situated; ambas- 
sadors and peers dwelt in Gerrard Street; Bolingbroke 
lived in Golden Square. Traces of former splendor still 
linger about these decayed neighborhoods; paintings by 
Sir James Thornhill, Hogarth's master and father-in-law, 
and elaborate marble mantel-pieces, with Corinthian col- 
umns and entablatures, still adorn the interiors of some 
of these houses; bits of quaint Queen Anne architecture 
and finely wrought iron railings still lend an air of failed 
gentility to some of the dingy exteriors. Parts of Lon- 
don that are now fashionable had not then come into 
existence. Grosvenor Square was only begun in 1716, 
and it was not until 1725 that the new quarter was suf- 
ficiently advanced for its creator, Sir Richard Grosvenor, 
to summon his intending tenants to a "splendid enter- 
tainment, 1 ' at which the new streets and squares were 
solemnly named. 

Though we of to-day have seen a good deal of what 
are called Anne and Georgian houses, of red brick, curi- 
ously gabled, springing up in all directions, we must not 
suppose that the London of 1714 was chiefly composed 
of such cheerful buildings. Wren and Vanbrugh would 
be indeed surprised if they could see the strange works 
that are now done, if not in their name, at least in the 
name of the age for which they built their heavy, plain, 
solid houses. We can learn easily enough from contem- 
porary engravings what the principal London streets 
anil squares were like when George the Elector became 
George the King. There are not many remains now of 
Anne's London, but Queen Anne's Gate, some few houses 
in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and here and there a house 
in the City preserve the ordinary architecture of the age 
of Anne. Marlborough House bears witness to what, it 
did in the way of more pretentious buildings. 

The insides of these houses were scarcely less like the 
"Queen Anne revival" of our time than the outsides. 
The rooms were, as a rule, sparingly furnished. Then' 
would be a centre-table, some chairs, a settee, a few pict- 
ures, a mirror, possibly a spinet or musical instrument 
of some kind, some shelves, perhaps, for displaying the 
Chinese and Japanese porcelain which every one loved, 



and, of course, heavy window -curtains. Smaller tables 
were used for the incessant tea-drinking. Large screens 
kepi off the too frequent draughts. Handsomely wrought 
stoves and andirons stood in the wide fireplaces. The 
rooms themselves were lofty ; the walls of the better 
kind wainscoted and carved, and the ceilings painted in 
allegorical designs. Wall-papers had only begun to come 
into use within the last few years of Anne's reign; win- 
dows were long and narrow, and small panes were a ne- 
cessity, as glass-makers had not yet attained the art of 
casting large sheets of glass. The stairs were exceed- 
ingly straight; it was mentioned as a recommendation to 
new houses that two persons could go up-stairs abreast. 
The rents would seem curiously low to Londoners of our 
time; houses could be got in Pall Mall for two hundred 
a year, and in good parts of the town for thirty, forty, and 
fifty pounds a year. Lady Wentworth, in 1 705, describes a 
house in Golden Square, with gardens, stables, and coaeh- 
hous •, the rent of which was only threescore pounds a 
year. Pretty riverside houses let at from five to ten 
pounds a year. Lodgings would seem cheap now, though 
they were not held so then, for Swift complains of paying 
eight shillings a week, when he lodged in Bury Street, 
for a dining-room and bedroom on the first floor. 

There was no general numbering of houses in 1714 ; 
that movement of civilization did not take place until 
1704. Places were known by their signs, or their vicin- 
ity to a sign. " Blue Boars," " Black Swans," and " Red 
Lions " were in every street, and people lived at the 
"Red Bodice," or over against the "Pestle." The Tat- 
ler tells a story of a young man seeking a house in Bar- 
bican for a whole day through a mistake in a sign, who: e 
legend read, "This is the Beer," instead of "This is tl e 
Bear." Another tried to get into a house at Stocks Mar- 
ket, under the impression that he was at his own lodgings 
at Charing Cross, being misled by the fact that there 
was a statue of the King on horseback in each place. 
Signs were usually very large, and jutted so far out from 
the houses that in narrow streets they frequently touched 
one another. As it was the fashion to have them care- 
fully painted, carved, gilded, and supported by branches 
of wrought iron, they were often very costly, some being 
estimated as worth more than a hundred guineas. 

The ill-paved streets were too often littered with the 
refuse which careless householders, reckless of fines, flung 
into the open way. In wet weather the rain roared along 
the kennel, converting all the accumulated tilth of the 
thoroughfare into loathsome mud. The gutter-spouts, 
which then projected from every house, did not always 
cast their cataracts clear of the pavement, but sometimes 
soaked the unlucky passer-by who had not kept close to 
the wall. Umbrellas were the exclusive privilege of 
women ; men never thought of carrying them. Those 
whose business or pleasure called them abroad in rainy 
weather, and who did not own carriages, might hire one 
of the eight hundred two-horsed hackney carriages ; jolt- 
ing, uncomfortable machines, with perforated tin sashes 
instead of window-glasses, and grumbling, ever-dissatis- 
fied drivers. There were very Few sedan chairs ; these 
were still a comparative novelty for general use, and 
their bearers were much abused for their drunkenness, 
clumsiness, and incivility. 

The streets were always crowded. Coaches, chairs, 
wheelbarrows, fops, chimney - sweeps, porters bearing 
huge burdens, bullies swaggering with great swords, 
bailiffs chasing some impecunious poet, cut purses, funer- 
als, christenings, weddings, and street fights, would seem 
from some contemporary accounts to be invariably mixed 
up together in helpless and apparently inextricable con- 
fusion. The general bewilderment was made more be- 
wildering by the very babel of street cries bawled from 
the sturdy lungs of orange-girls, chair-menders, broom- 
sellers, ballad-singers, old-clothes men, and wretched rep- 
resentatives of the various jails, raising their plaintive 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



21 



.1 ppeal to " remember the poor prisoners." The thorough- 
fares, however, would have been in Still worse condition 
but for the fact that so much of the passenger traffic of 
the metropolis was done by Mater and not by land. The 
wherries on the Thames were as frequent as the gondo- 
las on the canals of Venice. Across the river, down the 
river, up the river, passengers hurried incessantly in the 
swift little boats that plied for hire, and were rowed by 
one man with a pair of sculls, or two men with oars. De- 
spite the numbers of the river steamers at present, and 
the crowds who take advantage of them, it may well be 
doubted whether so large a proportion of the passenger 
traffic of London is borne by the river in the days of 
Queen Victoria as there was in the days of Queen Anne. 

Darkness and danger ruled the roads at night with all 
the horrors of the Rome of Juvenal. Oil lamps flickered 
freely in some of the better streets, but even these were 
not lit so long as any suggestion of twilight served for 
an excuse to delay the illumination. When the moon 
shone they were not lit at all. Link-boys drove a busy 
trade ill lighting belated wanderers to their homes, and 
saving them from the perils of places where the pave- 
ment was taken up or where open sewers yawned. Pre- 
caution was needful, for pitfalls of the kind were not 
always marked by warning lanterns. Footpads roamed 
about, and worse than footpads. The fear of the Mohocks 
had not yet faded from civic memories, and there were 
still wild young men enough to rush through the streets, 
wrenching off knockers, insulting quiet people, and defy- 
ing the watch. Indeed the watch were, as a rule, as un- 
willing to interfere with dangerous revellers as were the 
billmen of Messina, and seem to have been little better 
than thieves or Mohocks themselves. They are freely 
accused of being ever ready to levy black-mail upon those 
who walked abroad at night by raising ingenious accusa- 
tions of insobriety and insisting upon being bought off, 
or conveying their victim to the round-house. 

The Fleet Ditch, which is almost as much of a myth to 
our generation as the stream of black Cocytus itself, was 
an unsavory reality still in the London which George the 
First entered. It was a tributary of the Thames, which, 
rising somewhere among the gentle hills of Hampstead, 
sought out the river and found it at Blackfriars. At one 
time it was used for the conveyance of coals into the 
city, and colliers of moderate size used to ascend it for a 
short distance. But towards the end of Anne's reign, 
and indeed for long before, it had become a mere trick- 
ling puddle, discharging its filth and refuse and sewage 
into the river, and poisoning the air around it. 

May Fair was still, and for many years later, celebrat- 
ed in the now fashionable quarter which bears its name. 
The fair lasted for six weeks, and left about six months' 
demoralization behind it. " Smock races " — that is to 
say, races run by young women for a prize of a laced 
chemise, the competitors sometimes being attired only in 
their smocks — were still to be seen in Pall Mall and vari- 
ous other places. This popular amusement was kept up 
in London until 1733, and lingered in country places to a 
much later time. Bartholomew Fair was scarcely less 
popular, or less renowned for its specialty of roast suck- 
ing-pig, (han in the days when Ben Jonson's Master Lit- 
tle-Wit, and his wife Win-the-Fight, made acquaintance 
with its wild humors. There is a colored print of about 
this lime which gives a sufficiently vivid presentment of 
the fair. At Lee and Harper's booth the tragedy of 
"Judith and Ilolof ernes" is announced by a great- glar- 
ing, painted cloth, while the platform is occupied by a 
gentleman in Roman armor and a lady in Eastern attire, 
who are no doubt the principal characters of the play. 
A gaudy Harlequin and his brother Scaramouch invite 
the attention of the passers-by. In another booth rope- 
dancing of men and women is offered to the less tragi- 
cally minded, and in yet another the world- renowned 
Faux displays the announcement of his conjuring mar- 



vels. A peep-show of the siege of Gibraltar allures the 
patriotic. Toy-shops, presided over by attractive dam- 
sels, lure the light-hearted, and the light-fingered too, for 
many an intelligent pickpocket seizes the opportunity to 
rifle the pocket of some too occupied customer. There is 
a revolving swing, and go-carts are drawn by dogs for 
the deligtri of children. "Hucksters go about selling gin, 
aniseed, and fruits, and large booths offer meat, cider, 
punch, and skill les. The place is thronged with visitors 
and beggars. A portly figure in a scarlet coat and wear- 
ing an order is said to be no less a person than Sir Robert 
Walpole, who is rumored to have occasionally honored 
the fair with his presence. 

Few of the clubs that play so important a part in the 
history of last-century London had come into existence 
in 1714. The most famous of them either were not yet 
founded, or lived only as coffee or chocolate houses. 
There had been literary associations like the " Scriblerus " 
Club, which was started by Swift, and was finally dis- 
solved by the quarrels of Oxford and Bolingbroke. The 
"Saturday" and " Brothers" Clubs had been political so- 
cieties, at both of which Swift was all powerful, but they, 
too, were no more. The "Kit-Kat" Club, of mystic- ori- 
gin and enigmatic name, with all its loyalty to Hanover 
and all its memories of bright toasts, of Steele, Addison, 
and Godfrey Kneller, had passed away in 1709, and nut 
no more in Shire Lane, off Fleet Street, or at the " Upper 
Flask" Inn at Hampstead. It had not lived in vain, ac- 
cording to Walpole, who declared that its patriots had 
saved the country. Within its rooms the evil-omened 
Lord Mohun had broken the gilded emblem of the crown 
off his chair. Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, who was 
secretary to the club, querulously insisted that the man 
who would do that would cut a man's throat, and Lord 
Mohun's fatal career fully justified Tonson's judgment. 
If the Kit-Kat patriots had saved the country, the Tory 
patriots of the October Club were no less prepared to do 
the same. The October Club came first into importance 
in the latest years of Anne, although it had existed since 
the last decade of the seventeenth century. The stunt 
Tory squires met together in the "Bell" Tavern, in nar- 
row, dirty King Street, Westminster, to drink October ale, 
under Dahl's portrait of Queen Anne, and to trouble with 
their fierce, uncompromising Jacobitism the fluctuating 
purposes of Harley and the crafty counsels of St. John. 
The genius of Swift tempered their hot zeal with the cool 
air of his " advice." Then the wilder spirits seceded, and 
formed the March Club, which retained all the angry Jac- 
obitism of the parent body, but lost all its importance. 
There were wilder associations, like the Hell-fire Club, 
which, under the presidency of the Duke of Wharton, was 
distinguished for the desperate attempts it made to justify 
its name. But it was, like its president, short lived and 
soon forgotten. There are fantastic rumors of a Calves' 
Head Club, organized in mockery of all kings, and espe- 
cially of the royal martyrs. It was said by obscure pam- 
phleteers to be founded by John Milton; but whether the 
body ever had any real existence seems now to be uncertain. 

Next to the clubs came the "mug-houses." The mug- 
houses were political associations of a humbler order, 
where men met together to drink beer and denounce the 
Whigs or Tories, according to their convictions. But 
at this time the coffee-houses occupied the most impor- 
tant position in social life. There were a great many of 
them, each with some special association which still keeps 
it in men's memories. At Garraway's, in Change Alley, 
tea was first retailed at the high prices which then made 
tea a luxury. The " Rainbow," in Fleet Street, the sec- 
ond coffee-house opened in London, is mentioned in the 
Spectator; the first was Bowman's, in St. Michael's Alley, 
Cornhill. Lloyd's, in Lombard Street, was dear to Steele 
and Addison. At Don Saltero's, by the river at Chelsea, 
Mr. Salter exhibited his collection of curiosities and de- 
lighted himself, and no one else, by playing the fiddle. At 



22 



A HISTORY OK THE FOUR OEOROKS. 



the " Smyrna" Prior ami Swift, were wont to receive their 
aoquaintanoea, BVom the "St. James's," the last house but 

one on the SOUth-WeSl Comer of St. .lames'. 4 Street., the 

Tatler dated its foreign ami domestic news, and conferred 
fame on its waiter, Mr. Kidney, " who lias long conversed 
with ami tilled tea for the si consummate politicians." 

It was the head - quarters of Whigs ami officers of the 
Guards ; letters from Stella were left, here for Swift, and 
here in later years originated Goldsmith's " Retaliation." 

Will's, at. the north corner of Russell Street, ami liow 
Street, famous for its memories of Dryden and for the 

'l'<itl< r\s dramatic Criticisms, had ceased to exist, in 1711. 
Its place was taken by Butt on's, at, the other side of Rus- 
sell Street, Started by Addison iii IVlL'. Here, later, was 

the lion-head letter-box for the Guardian, designed by 
Hogarth. At, Child's, in St. Paul's Church-yard, the 
Spectator often smoked a pipe. Sir Roger de Coverley 
was beloved at. Squire's, near Gray's Inn (late. Slaugh- 
ter's, in St. Martin's Lane, was often honored by the pres- 
ence first of Dryden, and then of Pope. Serle's, near 

Lincoln's Inn, was cherished by the law. At, the"Gre» 

oian," in Devereux Court, Strand, learned men met, and 
quarrelled ; a fatal duel was once fought in consequence 
of an argument there over the accent on a Greek word. 
At, the "Grecian," too, Steele amused himself by putting 
the action of Homer's " Iliad" into an exact, journal and 
planning his "Temple of Fame." From White's choco- 
late-house, which afterwards became the famous (dub, 
came Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff's ''Accounts of Gallantry, 
Pleasure, and Entertainment." The "Cocoa Tree" was 

the Tory Coffee-house, in St. James's Street. Oy.inda's 
chocolate - house, next, to St. James's Palace, was also a 

Tory resort, and its owner was arrested in 1 7 1 r> for sup- 
posed complicity in Jacobite conspiracy. 

To these coffee and chocolate houses came all the 1 wit 
and all the fashion of London. iMen of letters and states- 
men, men of the robe and men of the sword, lawyers, 

dandies, poets, ami philosophers, met, there to discuss poli- 
tics, literature, scandal, and the play. There were often 
very Strange figures among the motley crowd behind the 
red-ourtained windows of a St. James's coffee-house. The 
gentleman who made himself so agreeable to the bar-maid 
or who chatted so affably about, the oonduct of the allies 
or the latest, news from Sweden, might meet, you again 
later on if your road lay at all outside town, and imperi- 
ously request you to stand and deliver. But of all the va- 
ried assembly the strangest, figures must, have been the 
beaux ami exquisites, in all their various degrees of 

"dappers," "fops," "smart, fellows," "pretty fellows," 
and "very pretty fellows." They made a brave show in 
many-colored splendor of attire, heavily scented with 
Orange-flower water, civet-violet, or musk, with large fal- 

bala periwigs, or long, powdered duyilliers, with snutr- 

boxes and perspective glasses perpetually in their hands, 
and dragon or right Jamree canes, curiously clouded and 
amber headed, dangling by a blue ribbon from the wrist 
or the coat button. The stall' was as essential to an early 
Georgian gentleman as to an Athenian of the age of Peri- 
eles, ami the cane-carrying custom incurred the frequent 

attaoks of the satirists. Cane-bearers arc made to declare 
that the knocking of the cane upon the shoe, leaning one 
leg upon it,, or whistling with it in the mouth, were such 
reliefs to them in conversation that they did not know 
how to be good company without it. Some of I hesc young 
men appear to have affected cll'eminacy, like an Agathon 
or a Henri Trois. Steele has put it, on record that, he heard 
some, who set up to be pretty fellows, calling to one an 
other at White's or the St. James's by the names of " I'.et 
ty," "Nelly," and so forth. 

Servants play almost, as important, parts as their masters 
in the humors of the time. Rich people were always 
BUITOUnded by a throng id' servants. First came the val- 
el de ehambre, who was expected to know a little of 
everything, from shaving and wig -making to skill in 



country sports, and had aft much experience in all town 
matters as a servant out of Terence or Moliere. Last 
came the negro slave, who wailed on my lord or my lady, 
with the silver collar of servitude about his neck. 

Servants wore fine clothes and aped tine manners. The 
footmen of the Lords and Commons held mimic parlia- 
ment while wailing for their masters at Westminster, 
parodying with elaborate care the proceedings id' both 

Houses. They imitated their masters in other ways, too, 
taking their titles after the fashion made famous by Oil 
Lias and his fellow valets, and familiar by the farce of 
"High Life Below Stairs." The. writer of the Patriot 
of Thursday, August 10, I 7 1 1, satirizes misplaced ambi- 
tion by "A discourse which I overheard not many even- 
ings ago as I went, with a friend of mine into Hyde I'ark. 
We found, as usual, a great number of gentlemen's ser- 
vants at the park gate, and my friend, being unacquainted 
with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their 
masters' lilies, was very much surprised to hear a lusty 
rogue tell one id' his companions who inquired after his 

fellow-servant that his Grace had his head broke by the 
cook-maid for making a sop in the pan." Presently after 

another assured the company of the illness of my lord 
bishop. "The information had doubtless continued had 
not a fellow in a blue livery alarmed the rest with the 
news that Sir Edward and the manpiis were at, fisticuffs 
about a game at chuck, and that the brigadier had chal- 
lenged the major-general to a bout at, cudgels." 

It is only fair, after enumerating so many of the eccen- 
tricities and discomforts of early Georgian London, to 
mention one proof of civilization of which Londoners 
were able to boast. London had a penny-post, of which 
it, was not, unreasonably proud. This penny-post is thus 
described in Strype's edition of Stow's "Survey of Lon- 
don." "For a further convenience to the Inhabitants of 
this city and parts adjacent, for about ten miles compass, 
another post,, and that, a foot, -post, commonly called the 
penny-post, was erected, and though at, first set up by a 
private hand, yet, being of such considerable amount, is 
since taken into the post-office and made a branch of it. 
And in this all letters and parcels not exceeding a pound 
weight, and also any sum of money not above 610 or par- 
cel of £'10 value is safely conveyed, and at, the charge of 
a penny, to all parts of the city and suburbs, and but a 
penny more at, the delivery to most, towns within ten 
miles of London, and to some towns at a farther distance. 
Ami for the better management of this office there are in 
London and Westminster six general post-offices . . . at 
all which there constantly attend . . . officers to receive 
letters and parcels from the several places appointed to 
take them in, there being a place or receiving house for 
the receipt thereof in most, streets, with a table hung at 
the door or shop-window, in which is printed in great let- 
ters 'Penny-post Letters and Parcels are taken in Here.' 
And at those houses they have letter-carriers to call every 
hour. . . . All the day long they are employed, some in 
going their walks to bring in, and others to carry out." 

The next, town in population to London was Bristol, 
and Bristol had then only one - seventeenth of London's 
population. The growth of the manufacturing industry, 
which has created such a, cluster of great, towns in the 
North of England, had hardly begun to show itself when 
George the First came to the throne. Bristol was not 
only the most populous place after London at, this time, 
but it was the great English Seaport. It had held this 

rank for centuries. Even at the time when "Tom Jones" 

was written, many years after the accession of George the 
First, the Bristol Alderman Idled the same place in popu- 
lar imagination that is now assigned to the Alderman of 

London. Fielding attributes to the Bristol Alderman 

that fine appreciation of the qualities of turtle soup with 
whioh more modern humorists have endowed his metro- 
politan fellow. 

Liverpool was hardly thought of in the early Georgian 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



23 



days. It. was only made into a separate parish a few 

years before George came to the throne, and its first dock 

was opened in 1709. Manchester was comparatively ob- 
scnre and unimportant, and had not yet made its lirst ex- 
port of cotton lc«k)(Is. At tins time Norwich, famous for 
its worsted and woollen works and its fuller's earth, sur- 
passed it in business importance. By the middle of the 
century the population of Bristol is said to have exceeded 
ninety thousand; Norwich, to have had more than fifty- 
six thousand; Manchester, about forty-live thousand; 

Newcastle, forty thousand; and Birmingham, about thir- 
ty thousand; while Liverpool had swelled to about thirty 
thousand, and ranked as the third port in the country. 

York was the chief city of the Northern Counties; Exe- 
ter, the capital of the West. Shrewsbury was of s e ac- 
count] in the region towards the Welsh frontier. Worces- 
ter, Derby, Nottingham, and Canterbury were places of 
note. Hath had not come into its fashion and its fame 
as yet. Its first pump-room had been built only a few 
years before George entered England. The strength of 
England now, if we leave London out of consideration, 
lies in the north, and goes no farther southward than a 
line which would include Birmingham. In the early days 
of the Georges this was just, the part of England which 
was of least importance, whether as regards manufactur- 
ing energy or political power. 

Ireland jusi then was quiet. It had sunk into a quie- 
tude something like that of the grave. Civil war had 
swept over the country; a succession of civil wars indeed 
had plagued it. There was a time 1 just before the out- 
break of the parliamentary struggle against Charles the 
First when, according to Clarendon, Ireland was becom- 
ing a highly prosperous country, growing vigorously in 
trade, manufacture, Letters, and arts, and beginning to 
be, as he puts it, "a jewel of great lustre in the royal 
diadem." But civil war and religious persecution had 
blighted this rising prosperity, and for the evils coming 
from political proscription and religious persecution the 
statesmen of the time could think of no remedy but now 
proscription and fresh persecution. Roman Catholics 
were excluded from the legislature, from municipal cor- 
porations, ami from the liberal professions; they were 
not allowed to teach or be taught, by Catholics; they 
were not permitted to keep arms ; the trade and naviga- 
tion of Ireland were put under ruinous restrictions and 
disabilities. In the reign of Anne new acts had been 
passed by the Irish Parliament, and sanctioned by the 
Crown "to prevent the further growth of Popery." 
Some of these later measures introduced not a few of the 
very harshest conditions of the penal code against Catho- 
lics. The Irish Parliament at that, time was merely in 
fact what has since been called the British garrison; it 
consisted of the conquerors and the settlers. The Irish 
people had no more to do with it. except, in the way of 
suffering under it, than the slaves in Georgia thirty years 
ago had to do with the Congress at Washington. 

Dublin has perhaps changed less than London since 
1714, but it has changed greatly notwithstanding. The 
Irish Parliament was already established in College Green, 
but not in the 1 familiar building which it afterwards oc- 
cupied. It met in Chichester House, which had been 
built as a hospital by Sir George Carew a1 the close of 
tin' sixteenth century. From him it passed info the pos- 
session of Sir Arthur Chichester, an English soldier of 
fortune, who had distinguished himself in France under 
Henry the Fourth, and who afterwards came to Ireland 
.Mid played an active part in the plantation of Ulster. 
It was not, until 172H that Chichester House was pulled 
down and the new building creeled on its site. Trinity 
College, of course, stood on College Green, so did two 
other stately dwellings, Charlemont House and Clancarty 
House, both of which have long since passed away. 
There were several hook-shops on the Green as well, and 
a great many taverns and coffee - shops. The statue of 



King William the Third had been set up in 1701. The 
collegians professed great indignation at the manner in 
which the statue turned its back to the college gates, and 
the effigy was the object, of many indignities, lor which 
the Students sometimes got into grave trouble with the 
authoril ies. 

St. Patrick's Well was one of the great features of 
Dublin in the early part of the last century. It, Stood in 
the narrow way by Trinity College, the name of which 
had not long been altered from Patrick's Well Lane to 
Nassau Street. The change had been made in compli- 
ment, to a bust of William the Third, which adorned the 
front, of one of the houses, but for lone.- after I he place 
was much more associated with the well than with the 
House of Orange. The waters of the well were popu- 
larly supposed to have wonderful curative and health- 
giving properties, and it was much used. It, dried up 
suddenly in 1729, and gave Swift the opportunitj of writ- 
ing some fiercely indignant national verses. But the 
water was restored to it in 1731, and it still exists in 
peaceful, half-forgotten obscurity in the College grounds. 

Dawson Street, off Nassau Street, had only newly come 
into existence. Il was called after Joshua Dawson, who 
had jusi built for himself a handsome mansion with gar- 
dens round it,. He sold the house in L715 to the Dublin 
Corporation, to be used as a Mansion House for their 
Lord Mayors. Where Molesworth and Kildare Streets 
now stand there was al this lime a great piece of waste 
land called Molesworth Fields. Chapelizod, now a suffi- 
ciently populous suburb, was then the little village of 
Chappell Isoud, said to be so called from that Belle Isoud, 
daughter of King Anguish of Ireland, who was beloved 
by Tristram. The General Post-office in Sycamore Alley 
had for Postmaster -general Isaac Mauley, who was a 
friend of Swift. Manley incurred the Dean's resent- 
ment in 1718 by opening letters addressed to him. The 
postal arrangements were, as may be imagined, miserably 
defective. Owing to the carelessness of postmasters, the 
idleness of post-boys, had horses, and sometimes the want 
of horses, much time was lost and letters constantly mis- 
carried. 

The amusements id' Dublin were those; of London on a 
small scale. Dublin was as fond of ils coffee-houses as 
London itself. Lucas's, in Cork Street, was the favorite 
resort of beaux, gamesters, and bullies. Here Talbot 
Edgeworth, Miss Edgeworth's ancestor, whom Swift called 
the "prince of puppies," displayed his follies, his tine 
dresses, and his handsome face, and believed himself to be 
the terror of men and the adoration of women, till he died 
mad in the Dublin Bridewell. The yard behind Lucas's 
was the theatre of numerous duels, which were generally 
witnessed from the windows by all the company who 
happened to be present. These took care that the laws 
of honorable combat were observed. Close at hand was 
the "Swan " Tavern, in Swan Alley, a district devoted 
chiefly to gambling-houses. On Cork Hill was the cock- 
pit royal, where gentlemen and ruffians mingled together 
to witness and wager on the sport. Cork Hill was not 
a pleasant place at night. Pedestrians were often in- 
sulted and roughly treated by the chairmen hanging 
about. Lucas's and the " Eagle " Tavern. Even the waiters 
of these establishments sometimes amused themselves by 
pouring pailfuls of foul water upon the aggrieved passer- 
by. It, is not surprising, therefore, to find that, an Irish 
edition of the Hell-fire Club was set np at the "Eagle" 
in 1735. The roughness of the time found its way into 
the theatre in Smock Lane, which was the scene of fre- 
quent political riots. Dublin had its Pasquin or Marforio 
in an oaken image, known as the "Wooden Man," which 
had stood on the southern side of Kssex Street, not far 
from Eustace Street, since the end of the seventeenth 
cent ury. 

Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Belfast, were the only 
considerable towns in Ireland after the Irish capital. Not 



24 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



raanj' years had passed since Cork was besieged by Marl- 
borough himself, and taken from King James. The Duke 
of Grafton, one of the sons of Charles the Second, was 
killed then in a little street or lane, which still commem- 
orates the fact by its name. The same year that saw 
Marlborough besieging Cork saw Limerick invested by 
the forces of King William, under William's own com- 
ni nid. The Irish general, Sarsfield, held out so gallant- 
ly that William had to give up the attempt, and it was 
not until the following year, and after the cause of James 
had gone down everywhere else, that Sarsfield consented 
to accept the terms, most honorable to him, of the famous 
Treaty of Limerick. There was but little feeling in Ire- 
land in favor of the Chevalier at the time of Queen Anne's 
death. Any sympathy with the Stuart cause that still 
lingered was sentimental merely, and even as such hard- 
ly existed among the great mass of the people. To these, 
indeed, the change of masters could matter but little ; 
they had had enough of the Stuarts, and the conduct of 
James I lie Second during his Irish campaign had made 
his name and his memory despised. Rightly or wrongly 
he was charged with cowardice — he who in his early days 
had heard his bravery in action praised by the great Tu- 
renne — and the charge was fatal to him in the minds of 
the Irish people. The penal laws of Anne's days were 
not excused because of any strong Jacobite sympathies 
or active Jacobite schemes in Ireland. 

The Union between England and Scotland was only 
seven years old when George came to the throne of these 
kingdoms, and already an attempt had been made by a 
powerful party in Scotland to obtain its repeal. The 
union was unquestionably accomplished by Lord Somers 
ami other English statesmen, with the object of securing 
the succession much rather than the national interests of 
the Scottish people. It was for a long time detested in 
Scotland. The manner of its accomplishment, mainly by 
bribery and threats, made it more odious. Yet it was 
based on principles which secured the dearest interests 
of Scotland and respected the religious opinions of the 
population. Scottish law, Scottish systems, and the Scotch 
Church wire left without interference, and constitutional 
security was given for the maintenance of the Presby- 
terian Establishment. In plain words, the Union admit- 
ted and maintained the rights and the claims of the great 
majority of the Scotch people, and therefore, when the 
first heat of dislike to it had gone out, Scotland began- 
to find that she could be old Scotland still, even when 
combined in one constitutional system with England. 
She soon accepted cordially the conditions which-Dpened 
new ways to her industrial and trading energy, and did not 
practically interfere witli her true national independence. 

Edinburgh was then, and remained for generations to 
come, much the same as it appeared when Mary Stuart 
first visited it. Historians like Brantome, and poets like 
Ronsard, lamented for their fair princess exiled in a sav- 
age land. But the daughter of the House of Lorraine 
might well have been content with the curious beauty of 
her new capital. Even now, more than three centuries 
since Mary Stuart landed in Scotland, and more, than a 
century and a half since her descendant raised the stand- 
ard of rebellion against the Elector of Hanover, Edin- 
burgh Old Town retains more of its antique character- 
istics than cither of the capitals of the sister kingdoms. 
It is true that the Northern Athens has followed the ex- 
ample of its Greek original in shifting the scene of its 
social life. The Attic Athens of to-day occupies a dif- 
ferent site from that of the city of Pericles. New Edin- 
burgh has reared itself on the other bank of that chasm 
where once the North River flowed, and where now the 
trains run. Edinburgh, however, more fortunate than 
the city of Cecrops, while founding a new town has not 
lost the old. But at the time of the Hanoverian acces- 
sion, and for generations later, not a house of the new 
to-,vn had been built. Edinburgh was still a walled city, 



with many gates or " ports," occupying the same ground 
that she had covered in the reign of James the Third, 
along the ridge between the gray Castle on the height 
at the west and haunted Holyrood in the plain at the east. 
All along this ridge rose the huge buildings, "lands," as 
they were called, stretching from peak to peak like a 
mountain-range — five, six, sometimes ten stories high — 
pierced with innumerable windows, crowned with jag- 
ged, fantastic roofs and gables, and as crowded with life 
as the " Insula 3 " of Imperial Rome. Over all rose the 
graceful pinnacle of St. Giles's Church, around whose 
base the booths of goldsmiths and other craftsmen clus- 
tered. The great main street of this old town was, and 
is, the Canongate, with its hundred or so of narrow closes 
or wynds running off from it at right angles. The houses 
in these closes were as tall as the rest, though the space 
across the street was often not more than four or five feet 
wide. The Canongate was Edinburgh in the early days 
of the last century far more than St. James's Street was 
London. Its high houses, with their wooden panellings, 
with the old armorial devices on their doors, and their 
common stair climbing from story to story outside, have 
seen the whole panorama of Scottish history pass by. 

Life cannot have been very comfortable in Edinburgh. 
There were no open spaces or squares in the royalty, with 
the exception of the Parliamentary close. The houses 
were so well and strongly built that the city was seldom 
troubled by fire, but they were poor inside, with low, 
dark rooms. We find, in consequence, that houses in- 
habited by the gentry in the early part of the eighteenth 
century were considered almost too bad for very humble 
folk at its close, and the success of the new town was 
assured from the day when its first foundation-stone was 
laid. But if not very comfortable, life was quiet and 
simple. People generally dined at one or two o'clock in 
Edinburgh when George the First was king. Shopkeepers 
el. ised their shops when they dined, and opened them again 
for business when the meal was over. There was very 
little luxury ; wine was seldom seen on the tables of the 
middle classes, and few people kept carriages. There 
were not many amusements ; friends met at each other's 
houses to take tea at five o'clock, and perhaps to listen 
to a little music ; for the Edinburghers were fond of 
music, and an annual concert which was established early 
in the century lingered on till within three years of its 
close. But this simplicity was not immortal, and we hear 
sad complaints as the century grows old concerning the 
decadence of manners made manifest in the luxurious 
practice of dining as late as four or five, the freer use of 
wine, and other signs of over-civilization. 

Glasgow, in the Clyde valley, ranked next to Edinburgh 
in importance among Scotch towns. More than twenty 
years later than the time of which we treat, the author 
of a pamphlet called " Memoirs of the Times " could 
write, "Glasgow is become the third trading city in the 
island." But in 1714 the future of its commercial pros- 
perity, founded upon its trade with the West Indies and 
the American colonies, had scarcely dawned. The Scotch 
merchants had not yet been able, from want of capital, 
and, it was said, the jealousy of the English merchants, 
to make much use of the privileges conferred upon them 
by the union, and Glasgow was on the wrong side of the 
island for sharing in Scotland's slight Continental trade. 
Still, Glasgow was fairly thriving, thanks to the inland 
navigation of the Clyde. Some of its streets were broad; 
many of its houses substantial, and even stately. Its 
pride was the great minster of St. Mungo's, "a solid, 
weal-jointed mason-wark, that will si and as lang as the 
warm keep hands and gunpowther aft" it," to quote the 
enthusiastic words of Andrew Fairservice. The streets 
were often thronged with the wild Highlanders from the 
hills, who came down as heavily and as variously armed 
as a modern Albanian chieftain, to trade in small cattle 
and shaggy ponies. 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



25 



At this time the average Englishman knew little about 
the Lowlands and nothing about the Highlands of Scot- 
land. The Londoner of the age of Anne would have 
looked upon any traveller who had made his way through 
the Highlands of Scotland with much the same curiosity 
as his descendants, a generation or two later, regarded 
Bruce when he returned from Abyssinia, and would prob- 
ably have received most of his statements with a politer 
but not less profound disbelief. It was cited, as a proof 
of the immense popularity of the Spectator, that despite 
all the difficulties of intercommunication it found its way 
into Scotland. George the First had passed away, and 
George the Second was reigning in his stead, before any 
Englishman was found foolhardy enough to explore the 
Scottish Highlands, and lucky enough to escape unhurt, 
and publish an account of his experiences, and put on 
record his disgust at the monstrous deformity of the High- 
land scenery. But the Londoner in 1714 was scarcely 
better informed about the Scotch Lowlands. What he 
could learn was not of a nature to impress him very pro- 
foundly. Scotland then, and for some time to come, was 
very far behind England in many things ; most of all, in 
everything connected with agriculture. In the villages 
the people dwelt in rude but fairly comfortable cottages, 
made chiefly of straw -mixed clay, and straw- thatched. 
Wearing clothes that were usually home -spun, home- 
woven, and home-tailored; living principally, if not en- 
tirely, on the produce of his own farm, the Lowland farmer 
passed a life of curious independence and isolation. To 
plough his land, with its strange measurements of "ox- 
gate," " ploughgate," and " davoch," he had clumsy wooden 
ploughs, the very shape of which is now almost a tradi- 
tion, but which were certainly at least as primitive in con- 
struction as the plough Ulysses guided in his farm at 
Ithaca. Wheeled vehicles of any kind, carts or wheelbar- 
rows, were rarities. A parish possessed of a couple of carts 
was considered well provided for. Even whei'e carts were 
known, they were of little use, they were so wretchedly 
constructed, and the few roads that did exist were totally 
unfit for wheeled traffic. Roads were as rare in Scotland 
then as they are to-day in Peloponnesus. An enterpris- 
ing Aberdeenshire gentleman, Sir Archibald Grant, of 
Monymusk, is deservedly distinguished for the interest 
he took in road-making about the time of the Hanoverian 
accession. Some years later statute labor did a little — 
a very little — towards improving the public roads, but it 
was not until after the rebellion of 1745, when the Gov- 
ernment took the matter in hand, that anything really 
efficient was done. A number of good roads were then 
made, chiefly by military labor, and received in popular 
language the special title of the King's highways. But 
in the early part of the century there was little use for 
carts, even of the clumsiest kind. Such carriage as was 
necessary was accomplished by strings of horses tethered 
in Indian file, like the lines of camels in the East, and 
laden with sacks or baskets. The cultivation of the soil 
was poor ; " the surface was generally unenclosed ; oats 
and barley the chief grain products; wheat little culti- 
vated ; little hay made for winter ; the horses then feed- 
ing chiefly on straw and oats." "The arable land ran 
in narrow slips," with " stony wastes between, like the 
moraines of a glacier." The hay meadow was an un- 
drained marsh, where rank grasses, mingled with rushes 
and other aquatic plants, yielded a coarse fodder. About 
the time when George the First became King of England 
Lord Haddington introduced the sowing of clover and 
other grass seeds. Some ten years earlier an English- 
woman, Elizabeth Mordaunt, daughter of the Earl of 
Peterborough, and wife of the Duke of Gordon, intro- 
duced into her husband's estates English ploughs, English 
ploughmen, the system of fallowing up to that time un- 
known in Scotland, planted moors, sowed foreign grasses, 
and showed the Morayshire farmers how to make hay. 
As a natural result of the primitive and incomplete 



agriculture, dearth of food was frequent, and even se- 
vere famine, in all its horrors of starvation and death, 
not uncommon. When George the First came to the 
throne the century was not old enough for the living gen- 
eration of Scotchmen to forget the ghastly seven years 
that had brought the seventeenth century to its close — 
seven empty ears blasted with east-wind. So many died 
of hunger that, in the grim words of one who lived through 
that time, " the living were wearied with the burying of 
the dead." The plague of hunger took away all natural 
and relative affections, "so that husbands had not sym- 
pathy for their wives, nor wives for their husbands; par- 
ents for their children, nor children for their parents." 
The saddest proof of the extent of the suffering is shown 
in the irreligious despair which seized upon the sufferers. 
Scotland then, as now, was strongly marked for its piety, 
but want made men defiant of heaven, prepared, like her 
who counselled the man of L T z, to curse God and die by 
the roadside. Warned by no dream of thin and ill-fa- 
vored kine, the Pharaohs of Westminster had passed an 
Act, enforced while the famine was well begun, against 
the importation of meal into Scotland. At the sorest of 
the famine, the importation of meal from Ireland was 
permitted, and exportation of grain from Scotland pro- 
hibited. But, in the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, when the famine had but just subsided, a Govern- 
ment commission ordered that all loads of grain brought 
from Ireland into the West of Scotland should be staved 
and sunk. 

The empire over which King George came to rule was 
as yet in a growing, almost a fluid condition. In North 
America, England had, by one form of settlement or anoth- 
er, New York, but lately captured ; New Jersey, the New 
England States, such as they then were, Virginia — an old 
possession — Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania — 
settled by William Penn, whose death was now very near. 
Louisiana had just been taken possession of by the French. 
The city of New Orleans was not yet built. The French 
held the greater part of what was then known of Can- 
ada; Jamaica, Barbadoes, and other West Indian islands 
were in England's ownership. The great East Indian 
Empire was only in its very earliest germ ; its full de- 
velopment was not yet foreseen by statesman, thinker, 
or dreamer. The English flag had only begun to float 
from the Rock of Gibraltar. 

CHAPTER VI. 

oxford's fall ; bolingbkoke's flight. 

King George did not make the slightest concealment 
of his intentions with regard to the political complexion 
of his future government. He did not attempt or pre- 
tend to conciliate the Tories, and, on the other hand, he 
was determined not to be a puppet in the hands of a 
"Junto" of illustrious Whigs. He therefore formed a 
cabinet, composed exclusively, or almost exclusively, of 
pure Whigs ; but he composed it of Whigs who at that 
time were only rising men in the political world. He 
was going to govern on Whig principles, but he was not 
going to be himself governed by another "Junto" of 
senior Whig statesmen, like that which had been so pow- 
erful in the reign of William the Third. He acted with 
that shrewd, hard common-sense which was an attribute 
of his family, and which often served instead of genius 
or enlightenment or intelligence, or even experience. A 
man ofinfinitely higher capacity than George might have 
found himself puzzled as to his proper policy under con- 
ditions entirely new and unfamiliar; but George acted 
as if the conditions were familiar to him, and set about 
governing England as he would have set about managing 
his household in Hanover ; and he somehow hit upon the 
course which, under all the circumstances, was the best 
he could have followed. It is not easy to see how he 
could have acted otherwise with safety to himself. It 



26 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



u ould have been idle to try to conciliate the Tories. The 
more active spirits among the Tories were, in point of 
fact, conspirators on behalf of the Stuart cause. The 
colorless Tories were not men whose influence or force 
of character would have been of much use to the king 
in endeavoring to bring about a reconciliation between 
the two great parties in the State. The civil war was 
not over, or nearly over, yet, and there were still to conic 
some moments of crisis, when it seemed doubtful whether, 
after all, the cause supposed to be fallen might not suc- 
cessfully lift its head again. As the words of Scott's 
spirited ballad put it, before the Stuart crown was to go 
down, "there are heads to be broke." For George the 
First to attempt to form a Coalition Cabinet of Whigs 
and Tories at such a time would have been about as wild 
a scheme as for M. Thiers to have formed a Coalition 
Cabinet of Republicans and of Bonapartists, while Na- 
poleon the Third was yet living at Chiselhurst. 

The Tories had been much discredited in the eyes of 
the country by the Peace of Utrecht. The long War of 
the Succession had been allowed to end without securing 
to England and to Europe the one purpose with which 
it was undertaken by the allies. It was a war to decide 
whether a French prince, a grandson of Louis the Four- 
teenth, and whose accession seemed to threaten a future 
union of Spain with France, should or should not be 
allowed to ascend the throne of Spain. The end of the 
war left the French prince on the throne of Spain. Yet 
even this fact would not in itself have been very distress- 
ing or alarming to the English people, however it might 
have pained others of the allied States. The English 
people probably would never have drawn a sword against 
France in this quarrel if it had not been for the rash act 
of Louis the Fourteenth in recognizing the chevalier, 
James Stuart, as King of England on the death of his 
father, .lames the Second. But England felt bitterly 
that the Peace of Utrecht left France and Louis not 
only unpunished, but actually rewarded. All the cam- 
paigns, the victories, the sacrifices, the genius of Marl- 
borough, the heroism of his soldiers, had ended in noth- 
ing. Peace was secured at any price. It was not that 
the people of England did not want to have a peace 
made at the time. On the contrary, most Englishmen 
were thoroughly tired of the war, and felt but little in- 
terest in the main objects for which it had been origi- 
nally undertaken. Most Englishmen would have agreed 
to the very terms which were contained in the Treaty, 
disadvantageous as these conditions were in many points. 
But they were ashamed of the manner in which the 
Treaty had been brought about, more than of the Treaty 
itself. France lost little or nothing by the arrangement; 
she sacrificed no territory, and was left with practically 
the same frontier which she had secured for herself 
twenty years before. Spain had to give up her posses- 
sions in Italy and the Low countries. The Dutch got 
very little to make up to them for their troubles and 
losses, but they could do nothing for themselves, and the 
English statesmen were determined not to continue the 
war. Yet, on the whole, these terms were not altogether 
unsatisfactory to the people of England. The war was 
becoming an insufferable burden. "The National Debt 
was swollen to a size which alarmed at that time and 
almost, horrified many persons, and there seemed no 
chance whatever of the expulsion of Philip, the French 
prince, from Spain. All these considerations had much 
influence over the public mind, and possibly would of 
themselves have entirely borne down the arguments of 
those who contended that an opportunity was now come 
to England of bringing France, so long her principal en- 
emy and greatest danger, completely to her feet. Marl- 
borough's victories had, indeed, made it easy to match 
to Paris, and dictate there such terms of peace as would 
keep France powerless for generations to come. But the 
English people were disgusted by the manner in which 



the Treaty of Utrecht had been brought about. In 
order to secure that arrangement it was absolutely nec- 
essary to destroy the authority of Marlborough, and the 
Tory statesmen set about this work with the most shame- 
less and undisguised pertinacity. Through the influence 
of Mrs. Mashani, a cousin of the Duchess of Marlborough, 
introduced by the Duchess herself to the Queen, the 
Tory statesmen contrived to get the Whig ministry dis- 
missed, and a ministry formed under Harley and Bol- 
ingbroke. These statesmen opened secret negotiations 
with France. They were determined to bring about 
a peace by any sort of arrangement. They betrayed 
England's allies by entering into secret negotiations 
with the enemy, in express violation of the conditions 
of the alliance ; they sacrificed the Catalonian popula- 
tions of Northern Spain in the most shameless manner. 
The Catalans had been encouraged to rise against the 
French prince, and England had promised in return to 
protect them, and to secure them the restoration of all 
their ancient liberties. In making the peace the Cata- 
lans were wholly forgotten. The best excuse that can 
be made for the Tory ministers is to suppose that they 
positively and actually did forget all about the Catalans. 
Anyhow, the Catalans were left at the mercy of the new 
King of Spain, and were treated after the severest fash- 
ion of the time in dealing with conquered but obstinate 
rebels. 

In order to make such a peace it was necessary to 
remove Marlborough. Some accusations were pressed 
against bim to secure his removal. He was charged 
with having taken perquisites from the contractors who 
were supplying the army with bread, and with having 
deducted two and one half per cent, from the pay which 
England allowed to the foreign troops in her service. 
Marlborough's defence would not have been considered 
satisfactory in our day; and indeed it is impossible to 
think of any such accusation being made, or any such 
defence being needed, in times like ours. Imagination 
can hardly conceive the possibility of such charges being 
seriously made against the Duke of Wellington, for ex- 
ample, or the Duke of Wellington condescending to plead 
custom and usage in reply to them. But in Marlborough's 
day things were very different, and Marlborough was able 
to show that, as regarded some of the accusations, he had 
only done what was customary among men in his posi- 
tion, and what he had full authority for doing ; and, as 
regarded others, that he had applied the sums he got to 
the business of the State as secret service money, ami 
had not made any personal profit. He did not, indeed, 
produce any accounts ; but, assuming his defence to be 
well founded, it is quite possible that the keeping of ac- 
counts might have been an undesirable and inconvenient 
practice. At all events it was certain that Manlborough 
had not done any worse than other statesmen of the time, 
in civil as well as in military service, had been in the 
habit of doing; and considering all the conditions of 
the period, the defence which he set up ought to have 
been satisfactory to every one. It probably would have 
satisfied his enemies but that they were determined to 
get rid of him. They were, indeed, compelled to get rid 
of him in order to make their secret treaty with France, 
and they succeeded. Marlborough was dismissed from 
all his employments, and went for a time into exile. 
The English people, therefore, saw that peace had been 
made by the sacrifice of the greatest English commander 
who, up to that time, had ever taken the field in their 
service. The treaty had been obtained by the most 
shameless intrigues to bring about the downfall of this 
great soldier. No matter how desirable in itself the 
peace might be, no matter how reasonable the condi- 
tions on which it was based, yet it became a national 
disgrace when secured by means like these. Nor was 
this all: the Tory statesmen finding it imperative for 
their purpose to have a majority in the House of Lords, 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR . GEORGES. 



27 



as well as in the House of Commons, prevailed upon the 
Queen to stretch her royal prerogative to the extent of 
making twelve peers. All these new peers were Tories ; 
one of them was Mr. Masham, husband of the woman 
who had assisted so efficiently in the degradation of the 
Duke of Marlborough. When they first appeared in the 
House of Lords, a Whig statesman ironically asked them 
whether they proposed to vote separately or by their 
foreman ? 

Never, perhaps, has a mean and treacherous policy like 
that which brought about the Treaty of Utrecht had so 
splendid a literary defence set up for it. Swift, with the 
guidance of Bolingbroke, and put up, indeed, to the work 
by Bolingbroke, devoted the best of his powers to defame 
Marlborough, ami to justify the conduct of the Tory min- 
istry. Nil matter how clear one's own opinions on the 
question may be, it is impossible, even at this distance 
of time, to study the writings of Swift on this subject 
without finding our convictions sometimes shaken. The 
biting satire, which seems only like cool common-sense 
and justice taking their keenest tone ; the masterly array, 
or perhaps we should rather say disarray, of facts, dates, 
and arguments ; the bold assumptions which, by their 
very ease and confidence, bear down the reader's knowl- 
edge and judgment ; the clear, unadorned style, made 
for convincing and conquering — all these qualities, and 
others too, unite with almost matchless force to make the 
worse seem the better cause. It is true that the mind of 
the reader is never impressed by Swift's vindication of 
the Tories, as it is always impressed by Burke's denuncia- 
tion of the French Revolution. Swift does not make one 
see, as Burke does, that the whole soul and conscience of 
the author are in his work. Swift is evidently the advo- 
cate retained to conduct the case ; Burke is the man of 
impassioned conviction, speaking out because he cannot 
keep silent. Still, we have all of us been sometimes made 
to question our own judgment, and almost to repudiate 
our own previously formed impressions as to facts, by the 
skill of some great advocate in a court of law ; and it is 
skill of this kind, and of the very highest order, that we 
have to recognize in Swift's efforts to justify the policy 
of the Treaty of Utrecht. To make out any case it was 
necessary to endeavor to lower Marlborough in the estima- 
tion of the English people, just as it was necessary to 
destroy his power in order to get the ground open for the 
arrangement of the treaty. Swift set himself to this task 
with a malignity equal to his genius. Arbuthnot, hardly 
inferior as a satirist to Swift, wrote a "History of John 
Bull," to hold up Marlborough and Marlborough's wife 
to ridicule and to hatred. He depicted the great soldier 
as a low and roguish attorney, who was deluding his 
clients into the carrying on of a long and costly lawsuit 
for the mere sake of putting money into his own pocket. 
He lampooned England's allies as well as England's great 
general ; he described the Dutch, whom the Tory min- 
isters had shamefully betrayed, as self-seeking and per- 
fidious traitors, for whose protection we were sacrificing 
all, until we found out that they were secretly juggling 
with our enemies for our destruction. No stronger argu- 
ment could be found to condemn the conduct of the Tory 
ministers than the mere fact that Swift and Arbuthnot 
failed to secure their acquittal at the bar of public opin- 
ion. All the attacks on Marlborough were inspired by 
Bolingbroke, and it has only to be added that Marlbor- 
ough had been Bolingbroke's first and best benefactor. 

The King appointed Lord Townshend his Secretary of 
State. The office was then regarded as that of First Lord 
of the Treasury is now ; it carried with it the authority 
of Prime-minister. James Stanhope was Second Secre- 
tary. Walpole was at first put in the subordinate office 
of Paymaster-general, without a seat in the Cabinet; a 
place in Administration which at a later period was as- 
signed to no less a man than Edmund Burke. Walpole's 
political capacity soon, however, made it evident that he 



was fitted for higher office, and we shall find that he does 
not remain long at the post of Paymaster-general. The 
Duke of Shrewsbury had resigned both his offices : that 
of Lord Treasurer, and that of Viceroy of Ireland. Lord 
Sunderland accepted the Irish Viceroyalty, and the Lord 
Treasurership was put into commission, and from that time 
was heard of no more. Next to Walpole himself, the 
most notable man in the Administration — the man, that 
is to say, who became best known to the world afterwards 
— was Pulteney, now Walpole's devoted friend, before 
long to be his bitter and unrelenting enemy. Pulteney, 
just now, is still a very young man, only in his thirty- 
third year; but he is the hereditary representative of 
good Whig principles, and has already distinguished him- 
self in the House of Commons as a skilful and fearless 
advocate of his political faith ; he is a keen and clever 
pamphleteer ; in later days, if he had lived then, he would 
doubtless have been a writer of leading articles in news- 
papers. His style is polished and penetrating, like that 
of an epigrammatist. He has travelled much for that 
time, and is what was then called an elegant scholar. 
The eloquent and silver-tongued Lord Cowper was re- 
stored to the office of Lord Chancellor, which he had al- 
ready held under Queen Anne, and by virtue of which he 
had presided at the impeachment of Saeheverell. When 
Cowper was made Lord Keeper of the Great Seal by 
Anne in 1705, he was in the forty-first year of his age, 
but looked very much younger. He wore his own hair 
at that time, an unusual thing in Anne's days, and this 
added to his juvenile appearance. The Queen insisted 
that he must have his hair cut off and must wear a heavy 
wig ; otherwise, she said, the world would think she had 
given the seals to a boy. Cowper was a prudent, cau- 
tious, clever man, whose abilities made a considerable im- 
pression upon his own time, but have carried his memory 
only in a faint and feeble way on to ours. He was a fine 
speaker, so far as style and manner went, and he had a 
charming voice. Chesterfield said of him that the ears 
and the eyes gave him up the hearts and understandings 
of the audience. The Duke of Argyll became Command- 
er-in-chief for Scotland. In Ireland, Sir Constantine 
Phipps was removed from the office of Chancellor, on the 
ground of his Jacobite opinions ; and it is a curious fact, 
worth noting as a sign of the times, that the University 
of Oxford unanimously agreed to confer on him an hon- 
orary degree almost immediately after — on the day, in 
fact, of the King's coronation. 

Lord Townshend, the Prime-minister, as we may call 
him, was not a man of any conspicuous ability. He be- 
longed to that class of competent, capable, trustworthy 
Englishmen who discharge satisfactorily the duties of 
any office to which they are called in the ordinary course 
of their lives. Such a man as Townshend would have 
made a respectable Lord Mayor or a satisfactory Chair- 
man of Quarter Sessions, if fortune had appointed him 
to no higher functions. He might have changed places 
probably with an average Lord Mayor or Chairman of 
Quarter Sessions without any particular effect being 
wrought on English history. Men of this stamp have 
nothing but official rank in common with the statesmen 
Prime-ministers — the Walpoles and Peels and Palmerstons ; 
or with the men of genius — the Pitts and Disraelis and 
(iladstones. Lord Townshend had performed the regular 
functions of a statesman in training at that time. Be 
had been an Envoy Extraordinary, and had made trea- 
ties. He was a brother-in-law of Walpole. Just now 
Walpole and he are friends as well as connections; the 
time came when Walpole and he were destined to quar- 
rel; and then Townshend conducted himself with remark- 
able forbearance, self-restraint, and dignity. He was 
an honest and respectable man, blunt of speech, and of 
rugged, homespun intelligence, about whom, since his 
day, the world is little concerned. Such name as be had 
is almost absorbed in the more brilliant reputation of his 



28 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



grandson — the spoiled child of the House of Commons, 
as Burke called him — that Charles Townshend of the 
famous "Champagne Speech ;" the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, of whom we shall hear a good deal later on, and 
who, by the sheer force of animal spirits, feather-head- 
ed talents, and ignorance, became, in a certain perverted 
sense, the father of American Independence. 

The Second Secretary of State, James, afterwards Earl, 
Stanhope, was a man of very different mould. Stanhope 
was one of the few Englishmen who have held high po- 
sition in arms and politics. He had been a brilliant sol- 
dier; had fought in Flanders and Spain; had distinguished 
himself at Barcelona, even under a commander like Peter- 
borough, whose daring spirit rendered it hard lor any 
subaltern to shine in rivalry; had been himself raised to 
command, and kept on winning victories until his milita- 
ry genius found itself overcrowed by that of the great 
French captain, the Duke de Vendome. His soldier's ca- 
reer came to a premature close, as indeed his whole mor- 
tal career did not very long after the time at which we have 
now arrived. Stanhope was a man of scholarly educa- 
tion, almost a scholar; he had abilities above the common; 
he had indomitable energy, and was as daring and reso- 
lute in the council as in the field. He had a domineering 
mind, was outspoken and haughty, trampling over other 
men's opinions as a charge of cavalry treads down the 
grasses of the field it traverses. He made enemies, and did 
not heed their enmity. He was single-minded, and, what 
was not very common in that day, lie was tree from any 
love of money or taint of personal greed. He does not 
rank high either among statesmen or soldiers, but as states- 
man and soldier together he has made for himself a distinct 
and a peculiar place. His career will always be remem- 
bered without effort by the readers of English history. 

A new Privy Council was formed which included the 
name of Marlborough. The Duchess of Marlborough 
urged her husband not to accept this office of barren hon- 
or. It is said that the one only occasion on which Marl- 
borough had ventured to act against the dictation of his 
wife was when he thus placed himself again at the dispo- 
sal of the King. He never ceased to regret that he had 
not followed her advice in this instance as in others. His 
proud heart soon burned within him when he found that 
he was appreciated, understood, and put aside; mocked 
with a semblance of power, humiliated under the pretext 
of doing him honor. 

Much more humiliating, much more ominous, however, 
was the reception awaiting Oxford and Bolingbroke. 
From the moment of his arrival, the King showed himself 
determined to take no friendly notice of the great Tories. 
Oxford found it most difficult even to get audience of his 
Majesty. The morning after the King's arrival, Oxford 
was allowed, after much pressure and many entreaties, to 
wait upon the Sovereign, and to kiss his hand. He was 
received in chilling silence. Truly, it was not likely that 
much conversation would take place, seeing that George 
spoke no English and Oxford spoke no German. But there 
was something in the King's demeanor towards him. as 
well as in the mere fad that no words were exchanged, 
which must have told Oxford that his enemies were in 
triumph over him, and were determined to bring about 
his doom. Even before George had landed in England 
he had sent directions that Bolingbroke should lie re- 
i ;o\-ed from his place of Secretary of Stale. On the 
list day of August this order was executed in a man- 
ner which made it seem especially premature, and even ig- 
nominious. The Privy Council, as it stood, was then dis- 
solved, and the new Council appointed, which consisted 
of only thirty-three members. Somers was one of this 
new Council, but in name alone ; his growing years, 
his increasing infirmities, and the flickering decay of his 
once great intellect, allowed him but little chance of 
ever again taking an active part in the affairs of the 
State. Marlborough was named a member of it, as we 



have seen. The Lords Justices ordered that all despatch- 
es addressed to the Secretary of State should be brought 
to them. Bolingbroke himself had to wait at the door of 
the Council Chamber with his despatch-box, to receive 
the commands of his new masters. 

France, tired of war, recognized the new King of Eng- 
land. The coronation of the King took place on October 
20th; Bolingbroke and Oxford were both present. We 
learn from some of the journals of the day that it had 
rained on the previous afternoon, and that many of the 
Jacobites promised themselves that the rain would con- 
tinue to the next day, and so retard, if only for a few hours, 
the hateful ceremony. But their hopes of foul weather 
were disappointed. The rain did not keep on, and the 
coronation took place successfully in London ; not, how- 
ever, without some Jacobite disturbances in Bristol, Bir- 
mingham, Norwich, and other places. 

The Government soon after issued a proclamation dis- 
solving the existing Parliament, and another summoning 
a new one. The latter called on all the electors of the 
kingdom, in consequence of the evil designs of men disaf- 
fected to the King, "to have a particular regard to such 
as showed a firmness to the Protestant Succession when it- 
was in danger." The appeal was clearly unconstitutional, 
according to our ideas, but it was made, probably, in an- 
swer to James Stuart's manifesto a few weeks before, in 
which the Pretender reasserted his claims to the throne, 
and declared that he had only waited until the death "of 
the Princess, our sister, of whose good intentions towards 
us we could not for some time past well doubt." 

The general elections showed an overwhelming majori- 
ty for the Whigs. The not unnatural fluctuations of public 
opinion at such a time are effectively illustrated by the 
sudden and complete manner in which the majority was 
transferred, now to this side, now to that. Just at this 
moment, and indeed for long after, the Whigs had it all 
their own way. Only a few years ago their fortunes had 
seemed to have sunk to zero, and now they had mount- 
ed again to the zenith. The King opened Parliament in 
person ; the Speech was read for him by the Lord Chan- 
cellor, for the very good reason that George could not 
pronounce English. That Speech declared that the estab- 
lished Constitution, Church and State, should be the rule 
of his Government. The debate on the Address was re- 
markable. In the House of Lords the Address contained 
the words, "To recover the reputation of this kingdom." 
Bolingbroke made his last speech in Parliament. He ob- 
jected to these words, and proposed an amendment, with 
an eloquence and an energy worthy of his best days, and 
with a front as seemingly fearless as though his fortunes 
were at the full. He contended that to talk of "recover- 
ing" the reputation of the kingdom was to cast a stigma 
on the glory of the late reign. He proposed to substitute 
the word "maintain" for the word "recover." His 
amendment was defeated by sixty r -six votes to thirty- 
three : exactly two to one. In the House of Commons 
the Address, which -was moved by- Walpole, contained 
words still more significant. The Address spoke of the 
Pretender's attempts "to stir up your Majesty's subjects 
to rebellion," declared that his hopes "were built upon 
the measures that had been taken for some time past in 
Great Britain," and added : "It shall be our business to 
trace out those measures whereon he placed his hopes, 
and to bring the authors of them to condign punishment.'' 
These words were the first distinct intimation given by the 
Ministers that they intended to call their predecessors to 
account. Stanhope stated their resolve still more explic- 
itly in the course of the debate. Bolingbroke sat and 
heard it announced that he and his late colleague were to 
be impeached for high-treason. He put on an appearance 
of serenity ami philosophic boldness for a time, but in his 
heart he had already taken fright. For a few days he 
went about in public, showing himself ostentatiously, with 
all the manner of a man who is happy in his unwonted 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



29 



ease, and is only anxious for relaxation and amusement. 
He professed to be rejoiced by his release from offiee, and 
those of his friends who wished to please him offered him 
their formal congratulations on his promotion to a retire- 
ment that placed him above the petty struggles and cares 
of political life. He visited Drury Lane Theatre on 
Match 26, 1715, went about among his friends, chatted, 
flirted, paid compliments, received compliments, arranged 
to attend another performance at the same theatre the 
following evening. That same night he disguised him- 
self as a serving-man, slipped quietly down to Dover, es- 
caped from thence to Calais, and went hurriedly on to Par- 
is, ready to place himself and his talents and his influence 
— such as it might be — at the service of the Stuarts. 

There seems good reason to believe that the Duke of 
Marlborough, by a master-stroke of treachery, avenged 
himself on Bolingbroke at this crisis in Bolingbroke's fort- 
unes, and decided the flight to Paris. Bolingbroke sought 
out Marlborough, and appealing to the memories of their 
old friendship, begged for advice and assistance, Marl- 
borough professed the utmost concern for Bolingbroke, 
and gave him to understand that it was agreed upon be- 
tween the l\l nisters of the Crown and the Dutch Govern- 
ment that Bolingbroke was to be brought to the scaffold. 
Marlborough pretended to have certain knowledge of this, 
and he told Bolingbroke that his only chance was in flight. 
Bolingbroke fled, and thereby seemed to admit in advance 
all the accusations of his enemies and to abandon his 
friends to their mercy. One of Bolingbroke's biographers* 
appears to consider that on the whole this was well done 
by Marlborough, and that it was only a fair retaliation on 
Bolingbroke. In any case, it is clear that Bolingbroke 
acted in strict consistency with the principles on which he 
had moulded his public and private life ; he consulted for 
himself first of all. It may have been necessary for his 
own safety that he should fly from the threatening storm. 
It is certain that he had bitter and unrelenting enemies. 
These would not have spared him if they could have made 
out a case against him. No one but Bolingbroke himself 
could know to the full how much of a case there was 
against him. But his flight, if it saved himself, might 
have been fatal to those who were in league with him for 
the return of the Stuarts. If he had stood firm, it is prob- 
able that his enemies would not have been able to prevail 
any further against him than they were able to prevail in 
his absence against Harley, whom his flight so seriously 
compromised. Nobody needs to be told that the one last 
hope for conspirators whose plans are being discovered is 
for all in the plot to stand together or all to fly together. 
Bolingbroke does not seem to have given his associates 
any chance of considering the position and making up 
their minds. 

A committee of secrecy was struck. It was composed 
of twenty-one members, and the hearts of Bolingbroke's 
friends may well have sunk within them as they studied 
the names upon its roll. Many of its members were con- 
scientious Whigs — Whigs of conviction, eaten up with 
the zeal of their house, like James Stanhope himself, and 
Spencer Cowper and Lord Coningsby and young Lord 
Finch and Pulteney, now in his period of full devotion 
to Walpole. There were Whig lawyers, like Lechmere ; 
there were steady, obtuse Whigs, like Edward Wortley 
Montagu, husband of the brilliant, and beautiful woman 
whom Pope first loved and then hated. There was Aisla- 
bie, then Treasurer of the Navy, afterwards Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, who came to disgrace at the bursting 
of the South Sea Bubble, and who would at anytime have 
elected to go with the strongest, and loved to tread the 
path lighted by his own impressions as to his own inter- 
ests. Thomas Pitt, grandfather to the great Chatham, 
the "Governor Pitt" of Madras, whose diamonds were 
objects of admiration to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 
was a member of the committee; and so was Sir Richard 
Onslow, afterwards speaker of the House of Commons, and 



uncle of the much more celebrated "Speaker Onslow." 
From none of these men could Bolingbroke have much 
favor to expect. Those who were honest and unselfish 
would be ill-disposed towards him because of their hon- 
esty and unselfishness ; those who were not exactly hon- 
est and certainly not unselfish, would, by reason of their 
character, probably be only too anxious to help the win- 
ning party to get rid of him. But the names that must 
have showed most formidable in the eyes of Bolingbroke 
and his friends were those of Robert Walpole and Rich- 
ard Hampden. Two years before this time the persistent 
enmity of Bolingbroke had sent Walpole to the Tower, 
branded with the charge of corruption and expelled from 
the House of Commons. Now things are changed in- 
deed. Walpole is chairman of the committee, and "Hast 
thou found me, oh, mine enemy?" St. John had threat- 
ened Hampden, who was a lineal descendant of the Hamp- 
den of the Civil War, with the Tower, for daring to cen- 
sure the Ministry of the day, and was only deterred from 
carrying out bis threat by prudent counsellors, who showed 
him that Hampden would be only too proud to share Wal- 
pole's imprisonment. These were men not likely to for- 
get or to forgive such injuries. 

At first the Tories seem scarcely to have believed that 
the Whigs would push their policy to extremities. The 
eccentric Jacobite Shippen publicly scoffed at the com- 
mittee, and declared in the House of Commons that its 
investigations would vanish into smoke. Such confidence 
was quickly and rudely shattered. June 9th saw a mem- 
orable scene. On that day Robert Walpole, as chair- 
man of the Committee of Secrecy-, rose and told the 
House of Commons that he had to present a report, but 
that he w T as commanded by the committee to move in the 
first instance that a warrant be issued by the Speaker to 
apprehend several persons who should be named by him, 
and that meantime no member be permitted to leave the 
House. Thereupon the lobbies were cleared of all stran- 
gers, and the Sergeant-at-arms stood at the door in order 
to prevent any member from going out. Then Walpole 
named Mr. Matthew Prior, Mr. Thomas Harley, and other 
persons, and the Speaker issued his warrant for their ar- 
rest. Mr. Prior was arrested at once ; Mr. Harley a few 
hours afterwards. 

Prior was the poet, the friend and correspondent of 
Bolingbroke. He had been much engaged in the nego- 
tiations for the Treaty of Utrecht, and had at one time 
actually held the rank of English Envoy. He had but 
lately returned from Paris ; had arrived in London just 
before Bolingbroke's flight. Thomas Harley, cousin of 
Lord Oxford, had also been concerned in the negotiations 
in a less formal and more underhand sort of way. When 
the arrests had been ordered, Walpole informed the House 
that the Committee of Secrecy had agreed upon their re- 
port, and had commanded him to submit it to the House 
of Commons. The report, which Walpole himself, as 
chairman of the committee, had drawn up, was a docu- 
ment of great length; it occupied manyr hours in the read- 
ing. But the time could not have seemed tedious to those 
who listened. The report was an indictment and a State 
paper combined. It arrayed with the utmost skill all the 
evidences and arguments, all the facts and all the passages 
of correspondence, necessary to make out a case against 
t'ne accused statesmen. It carried with it, beyond ques- 
tion, the complete historical condemnation of Oxford and 
Bolingbroke in all that related to the Treaty of Utrecht. 
Never was it more conclusively established for the his- 
torian that Ministers of State had used the basest means 
to bring about the basest objects. It was made clear as 
light that the national interests and the national honor 
had been sacrificed for partisan and for personal purposes. 
Objects in themselves criminal for statesmen to aim at had 
been sought by means which would have been shameful 
even if employed for justifiable ends. Had Bolingbroke 
and Oxford been endeavoring to save the State by the 



30 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



arts which they employed to sacrifice it, their conduct 
would have called for the condemnation of all honest men. 
But as regards the transactions with James Stuart there 
was ample ground shown for suspicion, there was good 
reason to conjecture or to infer, but there was no posi- 
tive evidence of intended treason. A historian reading 
over the report would in all probability come to the con- 
clusion that Oxford and Bolingbroke had been plotting 
with James Stuart, but he would not see in it satisfac- 
tory grounds for an impeachment. No jury would con- 
vict on such evidence ; no jury probably would even leave 
the box for the purpose of considering their verdict. In 
the course of the events that were soon to follow it was 
placed beyond any doubt that Bolingbroke and Oxford 
had all along been trying to arrange for the return of the 
Stuarts. They were not driven to throw themselves in 
despair into the Stuart cause by reason of harsh proceed- 
ings taken against them by their enemies in England; 
they had been " pipe-laying," to use an expressive Amer- 
ican word, for the Stuart restoration during all the closing 
years of Queen Anne's reign. The reader must decide 
for himself as to the degree of moral or political guilt 
involved in such transactions. It has to be remembered 
that nearly half — some still say more than half — of the 
population of these countries was in favor of such a res- 
toration, and that Anne herself unquestionably leaned to 
the same view. What is certain is that Oxford and Bol- 
ingbroke were planning for it. But what seems equally 
clear is that the report of the Secret Committee did not 
contain satisfactory evidence on which to sustain a charge 
of treason. Swift is not a trustworthy witness on these 
subjects, but he is quite right when he says that the al- 
legations were "more proper materials to furnish out a 
pamphlet than an impeachment." 

Bolingbroke's friends must have felt deeply grieved 
at his flight when they heard the statement of the case 
against him. Even as regards the Treaty of Utrecht, it 
seems questionable whether the historical conviction as- 
suredly obtained against him by the contents of the re- 
port would, in the existing condition of politics and par- 
ties, have been followed by any sort of judicial convic- 
tion, whether in a court of law or a trial by Parlia- 
ment. 

The day after the reading of the report gave Walpole 
his long-desired revenge ; he impeached Bolingbroke of 
high-treason. There was a dead silence in the House 
when he had finished. Then two of Bolingbroke's friends, 
Mr. Ilungerford and General Ross, mustered up courage 
to speak a few words for their lost leader. The star of 
the morning, the Tory Lucifer, had fallen indeed ! Lord 
Coningsby got up and made a clever little set speech. 
Walpole had impeached the hand, and Lord Coningsby 
impeached the head ; Walpole had impeached the clerk, 
and Coningsby impeached the justice ; Walpole had im- 
peached the scholar, and Coningsby impeached the mas- 
ter. This head, this justice, this master, was, of course, 
the Lord Oxford. As a piece of dramatic declamation 
Coningsby's impeachment was telling enough; as a his- 
torical presentation of the case against the I wo men it 
was absurd. Through all Anne's later years Oxford had 
been nothing and Bolingbroke everything. On the very 
eve of the Queen's death Bolingbroke had secured his 
triumph over his former friend by driving Oxford out 
of all office. Had Oxford been first impeached, and the 
speech of Lord Coningsby been aimed at Bolingbroke, it 
would have been strikingly appropriate; as it was, it be- 
came meaningless rhetoric. Next day Oxford went to 
the House of Lords, and tried to appear cool and uncon- 
cerned, but, according to a contemporary account, " find- 
ing that most members avoided sitting near him, and that 
even the Earl Powlet was shy of exchanging a few words 
with him, he was dashed out of countenance, and retired 
•ut of the House." 

Impeachments were now the order of the day. The 



loyal Whigs of the Commons were incessantly passing 
between the Upper House and the Lower with articles 
of impeachment, and still further articles when the first 
were not found to be strong enough for the purpose. 
Stanhope impeached the Duke of Ormond ; Aislabie im- 
peached Lord Strafford — not of high-treason, but of high 
crimes and misdemeanors ; Strafford was accused of being 
not only "the tool of a Frenchified ministry," but the 
adviser of most pernicious measures. Strafford's part in 
the negotiations had not been one of any considerable 
importance, lie had been sent as English Plenipoten- 
tiary to the Congress at Utrecht. Associated with him 
as Second Plenipotentiary was Dr. John Robinson, then 
Bishop of Bristol, and more lately made Bishop of Lon- 
don, the churchman on whom the office of the Privy Seal 
had been conferred by Ilarley, to the great anger of the 
Whigs. It was said that Strafford, in his high and mighty 
way, had refused flatly to accept a mere poet like Prior 
for his official colleague. Strafford had, in reality, little 
or nothing to do with the making of the Treaty. The 
negotiations were carried on between Bolingbroke and 
the Marquis de Torcy, French Secretary of State and 
nephew of the great Colbert; and when these wanted 
agents they employed men more clever and less pom- 
pous than Strafford. Aislabie, in bringing on his motion, 
drew a curious distinction between Strafford and Straf- 
ford's official colleague. " The good and pious Prelate," 
he said, had been only a cipher, and " seemed to have 
been put at the head of that negotiation only to palliate 
the iniquity of it under the sacredness of his character." 
He was glad, therefore, that nothing could be charged 
upon the Bishop, and complacently observed that the 
course taken with regard to Dr. Robinson, who was not 
to be impeached, " ought to convince the world that the 
Church was not in danger." There was some wisdom a* 
well as wit in a remark made thereupon by a member of 
the House in opposing the motion — "the Bishop, it seems, 
is to have the benefit of clergy." 

The motions for the impeachment of Bolingbroke and 
Oxford were carried without a division. This fact, how- 
ever, would be little indication as to the result of an im- 
peachment after a long trial, and after the minds of men 
had cooled down on both sides; when Whigs had grown 
less passionate in their hate, anil Tories had recovered 
their courage to sustain their friends. Even at the mo- 
ment the impeachment of the Duke of Ormond was a 
matter of far greater difficulty. Ormond had many 
friends, even among the most genuine supporters of the 
Hanoverian succession. He was the idol of the High- 
Church party; at all events, of the High-Church mob. 
Had he acted with anything like a steady resolve he 
would, in all probability, have escaped even impeach- 
ment. To some of the most serious charges against him, 
his refusal, for instance, to attack the French while the 
secret negotiations for the Treaty of Utrecht were going 
on, he could fairly have pleaded that he had acted only 
as a soldier taking positiye instructions and carrying them 
out. His clear and obvious policy would have been to 
take the quiet stand of a man conscious of innocence, and 
therefore not afraid of the scrutiny of any committee or 
the judgment of any tribunal. 

But Ormond hesitated. Ormond was always hesitat- 
ing. Many of his influential supporters urged him to 
seek an audience of the King at once, and to profess to 
George his unfailing and incorruptible loyalty. Had he 
taken such a course it is not at all unlikely that the King 
might have caused the measures against him to be aban- 
doned. Ormond's friends, indeed, were full of hope that 
they could, in any case, induce the Ministry not to perse- 
vere in the proceedings against him. On the other hand, 
he was urged to join in an insurrection in the West of 
England, towards which, beyond doubt, he had already 
himself taken some steps. The less cautious of his friends 
! assured him that his appearance in the West would be 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



31 



welcomed with open arms, and would bring a vast num- 
ber of adherents round him, and that a powerful blow 
could be struck at once against the Hanoverian succes- 
sion. Ormond, however, took neither the one course nor 
the other. To do him justice, he was far too honorable 
for the utter perfidy of the first course, and it is doing 
him no injustice to say that he was too feeble for the dar- 
ing enterprise of the second. It is believed that Ormond 
hail an interview with Oxford before his flight, and that 
he urged Oxford to attempt an escape in terms not unlike 
those with which William the Silent, in Goethe's play, 
endeavors to persuade Egmont not to remain in the 
power of Philip the Second. Then Ormond himself fled to 
France. He lived there for thirty years after. He led a 
pleasant, easy, harmless life, and was completely forgotten 
in England for years and years before his death. More 
than twenty years after his flight he is described by viva- 
cious Mary Wortley Montagu as " one who seems to have 
forgotten every part of his past life, and to be of no par- 
ty." lie was a weak man, with only a very faint outline 
of a character; but he was more honorable and consistent 
than was common with the men of his time. When he 
had once taken up a cause or a principle he held to it. 
He was the very opposite to Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke 
was genius and force without principle. Ormond had 
principle without genius or force. 

Two, then, of the great accused peers were beyond the 
reach of the House of Lords. Oxford alone remained. 
On July 9, 1 T 15, articles of impeachment were brought up 
against him. The impeachment does not seem to have 
been very substantial in its character. The great major- 
ity of its articles referred to the conduct of Oxford with 
regard to the Treaty of Utrecht. One article accused 
him of having abused his influence over her Majesty by 
prevailing upon her to exercise " in the most unprece- 
dented and dangerous manner " her prerogative by the 
creation of twelve Peers in December, 1711. A motion 
that Oxford be committed to the Tower was made, and 
on this motion he spoke a few words which were at once 
ingenious and dignified. He asserted his innocence of 
any treasonable practice or thought, and declared that 
what he had done was done in obedience to the positive 
orders of the Queen. He asked the House what might 
not happen if Ministers of State, acting on the immediate 
commands of their sovereign, were afterwards to be made 
accountable for their proceedings. Then in a few words 
he commended his cause to the justice of his brother 
peers, and took leave of the House of Lords, as he put it, 
"perhaps forever." Such an impeachment would have 
been impossible in more recent days. If Oxford had been 
accused of treasonable dealings with the Stuarts, and if 
evidence could have been brought home to him, there 
indeed might have been a reasonable ground for impeach- 
ment. But there was no sufficient evidence for any such 
purpose, and to impeach a statesman simply because he 
had taken a political course which was afterwards disap- 
proved by 'he nation, and which was discredited by re- 
sults, was simply to say that any failure in the policy of a 
Minister of the Crown might make him liable to impeach- 
ment when his enemies came into power. The Peace of 
LJtrecht, bad as it was, had been condoned, or rather ap- 
proved of, by two successive Parliaments. Shrewsbury, 
who was now in high favor, had been actively concerned 
in its promotion. It was a question of compromise alto- 
gether, on which politicians were entitled to form the 
strongest opinions. No doubt the enemies of the Tory 
party had ample ground for condemning and denouncing 
the Peace. But the part which a statesman had taken in 
bringing about the Peace could not, according to our 
modern ideas, form any just ground of ministerial im- 
peachment. Much more reasonably might the statesmen 
of a later day have been impeached who, by their blunder- 
ing and obstinacy, brought about the armed resistance 
and the filial independence of the North American colo- 



nies. It is curious, in our eyes, to find Oxford defending 
his conduct on the ground that he had simply obeyed the 
positive orders of his sovereign. The minister would run 
more risk of impeachment, in our days, who declared that 
he had acted in some great public crisis simply in obedi- 
ence to his sovereign's orders, than if he were to stand 
accountable for the greatest errors, the grossest blunders, 
committed on the judgment and on the responsibility of 
himself and his colleagues. 

Oxford was committed to the Tower, whither he went 
escorted by an immense popular procession of his admir- 
ers, who cheered vociferously for him and for High- 
Church together. He may now be said to drop out of 
our history altogether. lie was destined to linger in 
long confinement, almost like one forgotten by friends 
and enemies. We shall have to tell afterwards how he 
petitioned for a trial, and was brought to trial, and in 
what fashion he came to be acquitted by his peers. The 
remainder of his life he passed in happy quietude among 
his books and curious manuscripts; the books and manu- 
scripts which formed the original stock of the Harleian 
Library, afterwards completed by his son. Harley lived 
until 1724, and was not an old man even then — only sixty- 
three. It is not necessary that in this work we should 
concern ourselves much more about him. Despite all the 
praises of his friends, some of them men of the highest 
intellectual gifts, like Swift and Pope, there does not 
seem to have been any great quality, intellectual or mor- 
al, in Harley. He had a narrow and feeble mind ; he 
was incapable of taking a large view of anything ; he 
was selfish and deceitful; although it has to be said that 
sometimes that which men called deceit in him was but 
a lack of the capacity to look straight before him and 
make up his mind. He often led astray those who acted 
with him merely because his own confusion of intellect 
and want of defined purpose were leading himself astray. 
Perhaps the most dignified passage in his life was that 
which showed him calmly awaiting the worst in Lon- 
don, when men like Bolingbroke and Ormond had cho- 
sen to seek safety in flight. Yet even the course which 
he took in this instance seems to have been rather the 
result of indecision than of independent self - sufficing 
courage and resolve. He does not appear to have been 
able to decide upon anything until the time had passed 
when movement of any kind would have availed, and so 
he remained where he was. Many a man has gained 
credit for courage, and has seemed to surround himself 
with dignity, because at a moment of alarm, when others 
did this or that, he was unable quite to make up his mind 
as to what he ought to do, and so did nothing, and let the 
world go by. 

On September 17,Norroy, King at Arms, came solemn- 
ly down to the House of Lords and razed the names of 
Ormond and of Bolingbroke from the roll of peers. Bol- 
ingbroke had some consolation of a sham kind. He had 
wished and schemed to be Earl of Bolingbroke before 
his fall, and now his new king, James of St. Germains, 
had given him the patent of enhanced nobility. If he 
ceased to be a viscount in the eyes of English peers and 
of English heralds, he was still an earl in the Pretender's 
court. Bolingbroke had too keen a sense of humor not 
to be painfully aware of the irony of the situation. Nor 
was he likely to find much satisfaction in the peerage 
which the Government had just conferred upon his fa- 
ther, Sir Henry St. John, by creating him Baron of Bat- 
tersea and Viscount St. John. Sir Henry St. John was 
an idle, careless roue, a haunter of St. James's coffee- 
houses, living in the manner and in the memories of the 
Restoration, listlessly indifferent to all parties, leaning, 
perhaps, a little to the Whigs. He had no manner of 
sympathy with his son or appreciation of his genius. 
When the son was made a peer the father only said, 
" Well, Harry, I thought thee would be hanged, but now 
I see thee wilt be beheaded." The father himself was 



32 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



once very near being hanged. In his wild youth he had 
killed a man in a quarrel, and was tried for murder and 
condemned to death, and then pardoned by the King, 
Charles II., in consideration, it is said, of a liberal money- 
payment to the merry monarch and his yet more merry 
mistresses. 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE WHITE COCKADE. 

When Bolingbroke got to Paris he did not imme- 
diately attach himself to the service of James. Even 
then and there he still appears to have been undecided. 
In the modern American phrase, he "sat on the fence" 
for a while. Probably, if he had seen even then a chance 
of returning with safety to England, if the impeachments 
had not been going on, and if any manner of overture 
had been made to him from London, he would forthwith 
have dropped the Jacobite cause, and returned to profess 
his loyalty to the reigning English sovereigu. After a 
while, however, seeing that there was no chance fur him 
at home, he went openly into the cause of the Stuarts, 
and accepted the office of Secretary of State to James. 
It must have been a trying position for a man of Boling- 
broke's genius and ambition when he found himself thus 
compelled to put up with an empty office at a sham court. 
Bolingbroke's desire was to play on a. great*stage, with a 
vast admiring audience. lie loved the heat and passion 
of debate ; he enjoyed his own rhetorical triumphs. He 
must have been chilled and cramped indeed in a situation 
which allowed him no opportunity of displaying his most 
splendid and genuine qualities, while it constantly called 
on him for the exercise of the very qualities which he 
had least at hand. Nature had never meant him for a 
conspirator, or even for a subtle political intriguer ; nor, 
indeed, had Nature ever intended him to be the adherent 
of a lost cause. All that could have made a position like 
his tolerable to a man of his peculiar capacity would have 
been faith in the cause — that faith which would have pre- 
vented him from seeing any but its noble and exalted qual- 
ities, and would have made him forget himself in its hopes, 
its perils, its triumphs, and its disasters. On the contrary, 
it would seem that Bolingbroke found it difficult to take 
the Stuart cause seriously, even when he was himself play- 
ing the part of its leading statesman. A critical observer 
writes from Paris in the early part of the year 1T]C, say- 
ing that he believed Bolingbroke's chief fault was "that 
he could not play his part with a grave enough face ; he 
could not help laughing now and then at such kings and 
queens." Meantime, Bolingbroke amused himself in his 
moments of recreation after his old fashion. He indulged 
in amour after amour, intrigue after intrigue. Lord Ches- 
terfield said of him, that " though nobody spoke and wrote 
better upon philosophy than Lord Bolingbroke, no man 
in the world had less share of philosophy than himself. 
The least trifle, such as the overroasting. of a leg of mut- 
ton, would strangely disturb and ruffle his temper." On 
the other hand, a glance from a pretty woman, or a 
glimpse of her ankle, would send all Bolingbroke's politi- 
cal combinations and philosophical speculations flyinc; into 
the air, and convert him in a moment from the statesman 
or the philosopher into the merest petit maitre, macaroni, 
and gallant. 

Louis the Fourteenth refused to give open assistance 
to the cause of the Stuarts, but he was willing enough to 
lend any help that he could in private to Bolingbroke and 
to them. His death was the first severe blow to the cause 
which Bolingbroke now represented. Louis the Four- 
teenth was, according to Bolingbroke himself, the best 
friend James then had. " When I engaged," says Boling- 
broke, " in this business, my principal dependence was on 
his personal character ; my hopes sank as he declined, 
and died when he expired." The Regent, Duke of Or- 
leans, was a man who, with all his coarse and unrestricted 
dissipation, had some political capacity and even si 



manship. He saw that the Stuart was a sinking, the 
Hanoverian a rising cause. Even when the two seemed 
most nearly balanced it yet appeared to Orleans, if we 
may quote a phrase more often used in our days than in 
his, that the one cause was only half alive, but the other 
was half dead. Orleans, moreover, had a good deal of 
that feeling which was more strongly marked still in a 
Duke of Orleans of a later clay, He had a liking for 
England and for English ways ; he was, indeed, rather 
inclined to affect the political manners of an English 
statesman. He therefore leaned to the side of the Gov- 
ernment established in England ; and, at the urgent ro- 
quest of the English Ambassador in Paris, he acted with 
some energy in preventing the sailing of vessels intended 
for the uses of an expedition to the English coast. 

James Stuart seemed as if he were determined still 
further to imperil the chances of his family, and to em- 
barrass his adherents. The right moment for a move- 
ment in his favor had been allowed to pass away, and 
now, with characteristic blundering and ill fortune, he 
seized upon the most unsuitable time that could possibly 
have been employed for such an attempt. Something 
might have been done, perhaps, a temporary alteration 
in the dynasty might have been obtained, if energy and 
decision had been shown in that momentous interval when 
Queen Anne lay dying. But when that time had been 
allowed to pass, the clear policy of the Pretender was to 
permit the fears of Englishmen to go to sleep for a while, 
to endeavor to reorganize his plans and his party; to wait 
until a certain reaction should set in, a reaction very likely 
to come about because of the apparent incapacity and the 
unattractive character of George the First, and then at 
some timely hour, with well -matured preparations, to 
strike an energetic blow. George the First was only a 
year on the throne when the adherents of James got up 
a miserable attempt at an insurrection. 

There were three conditions under which, and under 
which alone, an insurrection just then would have had a 
reasonable chance of success. These conditions were 
fully recognized and understood by the Jacobite leaders 
in England, Scotland, and France. The first was that a 
rising should take place at once in England and in Scot- 
land, the second that the Chevalier in person should take 
the field, and the third that France should give positive 
assistance to the enterprise. The Jacobite cause was 
strong in the sonth-western counties of England, and there 
the influence of the Duke of Ormond was strong likewise. 
The general arrangement, therefore, in the minds of the 
Jacobite chiefs was that James Stuart should make his 
appearance in Scotland, that at the same moment the 
Duke of Ormond should raise the standard of revolt in 
some of the south-western counties, and that France 
should assist the expedition with men, money, and arms. 
When James, acting against the advice of his best coun- 
sellors, resolved on striking a blow at once, two of the 
necessary conditions were clearly wanting. France was 
not willing to give any actual assistance', and Ormond 
was not ready to raise the standard of rebellion in En j- 
land. 

Ormond's sudden appearance in Paris struck dismay 
into the hearts of the Jacobite counsellors, men and wom- 
en, there. It had been distinctly understood that he was 
to remain in England, and that, if threatened with arrest, 
he was to hasten to one of the western counties, where 
he and his friends were strong, and strike a sudden blow. 
He was to seize Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and other 
towns, and set the Stuart flag flying all over that part of 
England. When he appeared in France, a mere solitary 
fugitive, all men of sense saw that the game was up. 
Bolingbroke at once sent through safe hands a clear state- 
ment of the condition of things, to be laid before Lord 
Mar. Bolingbroke's object was to restrain Mar from any 
movement in the altered state of affairs. The letter, how- 
ev< i, came too late. Mar had already made his move- 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



33 



merit towards the Highlands: (here was no stopping the 
enterprise then; the rebellion had taken fire. James 
was determined more than ever to go. His arguments 
were the arguments of mere desperation. "I cannot but 
see," he wrote to Bolingbroke, "that affairs grow daily 
worse and worse by delays, ami that, as the business is 
now more difficult than it was six months ago, so these dif- 
ficulties will, in all human appearance, rather increase than 
diminish. Violent diseases must have violent remedies, 
and to use none has, in some cases, the same effect as to 
use bad ones." Indeed, it was impossible that the Chev- 
alier himself or the Duke of Ormond could hold back. 
Both had personal courage quite enough for such an at- 
tempt. On the 28th of October .Tames Stuart, after many 
delays, set out in disguise, and travelled westward to St. 
Malo. Ormond sailed from the coast of Normandy to 
that of Devonshire, but found there no sign of any ar- 
rangement for a rising. I lis plans had long been known 
to the English Government, and measures had been taken 
to frustrate them. In that little Jacobite Parliament 
sitting in Paris, which Bolingbroke spoke of with such 
contempt, and from which, as he puts it, "no sex was 
excluded," there was hardly any secret made of the proj- 
ects they were carrying on. Before the sudden appear- 
ance of Ormond in Paris they had counted, with the 
utmost confidence, on a full success, and were already 
talking of the Restoration as if it were an accomplished 
fact. Every word they uttered which it was of the least 
importance for the British Government to hear was in- 
stantly made known to Lord Stair, the new English Am- 
bassador — a resolute ami capable man, a brilliant soldier, 
an astute and bold diplomatist, equal to any craft, ready 
for any emergency, charming to all, dear to his friends, 
very formidable to his enemies. Ormond found that, as 
he had let the favorable moment slip when he fled from 
England to France, there was now no means whatever of 
recalling the lost opportunity. He returned to Brittany, 
and there he found the Chevalier preparing to start for 
Scotland. After various goings and comings the Cheva- 
lier was at last enabled to embark at Dunkirk in a small 
\ essel, with a few guns and half a dozen Jacobite officers 
to attend him, and he made for the Scottish coast. 

About the same time, and as if in obedience to some 
word of command from France, there was a general and 
almost simultaneous outburst of Jacobite demonstration 
in England, amounting in most places to riot. In London, 
and all over England, so far as one can judge, the popu- 
lar feeling appears to have been rather with the Jacobites 
than against them. Stout Jacobites toasted a myterious 
person called Job, who had no connection with the proph- 
et, but whose name contained the initial letters of James, 
Ormond, and Bolingbroke; and "Kit" was no less popular, 
because it stood for " King James III.," while the myste- 
rious symbolism of the "Three B's " implied "Best Born 
Briton," and so the Chevalier de St. George. The Cheva- 
lier's birthday — the loth of June — was celebrated with 
wild outbursts of enthusiasm in several places. Stuart- 
loving Oxford in especial made a brave show of its white 
roses. The Loyalists, who endeavored to do a similar 
honor to the birthday of King George, were often vio- 
lently assailed by mobs. In many places the windows 
of houses whose inmates refused to illuminate in honor 
of the Chevalier were broken ; William the Third was 
burned in effigy in various parts of London, and in many 
town- throughout the country. So serious at one period 
did the revulsion of Jacobite feeling appear to be. that it 
was thought necessary to form a camp in Hyde Park, and 
(.. bring together a large body of troops there. The Life 
Guards and Horse Grenadiers, three battalions of the 
Foot Guards, the Duke of Argyll's regiment, and several 
pieces of cannon were established in the cam)). By a 
Curious coincidence the troops were reviewed by King 
George, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of Marlbor- 
ough, on the 25th of August, 1715, the very day on which, 

3 



as we shall presently see, the Highland clans set up the 
standard of the Stuarts at Braemar, in Scotland. The 
camj) had a certain amount of practical advantage in it, 
independently of its supposed political necessity — it made 
Hyde Park safe at night. Before the camp was estab- 
lished, and after it was broken up, the Park appears -to 
have been little better than Bagshot Heath or Ilounslow 
Heath. It was* the favorite parade-ground of highway 
robbers and murderers. The soldiers themselves were 
occasionally suspected of playing the part of highway- 
men. "A man in those days," says Scott, " might have 
all the external appearance of a gentleman, ami vet turn 
out to be a highwayman;" and "the profession of the 
polite and accomplished adventurer who nicked you out of 
your money at White's, or bowled you out of it at Mary- 
lebone, was often united with that of the professed ruffian 
who, on Bagshot Heath or Finchley Common, commanded 
his brother beau to stand ami deliver." "Robbers — a 
fertile anil alarming theme — filled up every vacancy, and 
the names of the Golden Farmer, the Flying Highway- 
man, Jack Needham, ami other Beggars' Opera heroes, 
were familiar in our mouths as household words." The 
revulsion of Jacobite feeling actually showed itself some- 
times among the soldiers in the camp. Accounts pub- 
lished at the lime tell us of men having been flogged and 
shot for wearing Jacobite emblems in their caps. Per- 
haps in mentioning this Hyde Park camp it may not be 
inappropriate to notice the fact that General Macartney, 
who had figured in a terrible tragedy in the Park two or 
three years before, returned to England, and obtained the 
favor of George by bringing over six thousand soldiers 
from Holland to assist the King. General Macartney 
was the man who had acted as second to Lord Mohun in 
the fatal duel in Hyde Park on the 15th of November, 
1712, when both Mohun and the Duke of Hamilton were 
killed. Macartney escaped to Holland, and was charged 
by the Duke of Hamilton's second with having stabbed 
the Duke through the heart while Colonel Hamilton was 
endeavoring to raise him from the ground. Macartney 
came back and took his trial, but was only found guilty 
of manslaughter — that is to say, found guilty of having 
taken part in the duel, and escaped without punishment. 
Probably Macartney, and Hamilton, and Mohun, and the 
Duke are best remembered in our time because of the 
effect which that fatal meeting had upon the fortunes of 
Beatrix Esmond. 

The insurrection had already broken out in Scotland. 
John Erskinc, eleventh Earl of Mar, set himself up as lieu- 
tenant-general in the cause of the Chevalier. Lord Mar 
was a man of much courage and some capacity. He had 
held high office under Queen Anne. One of the biogra- 
phers of that period describes Mar as a devoted adherent 
of the Stuarts. His career is indeed a fair illustration of 
the sort of thing which then sometimes passed for devoted 
adherence to a cause. When King George reached Eng- 
land he dismissed Mar from office, suspecting him of sym- 
pathv with the Jacobite movement. Mar had expected 
something of the kind, and had written an obsequious and 
a grovelling letter to George, in which he spoke of the 
king's "happy accession," professed unbounded devotion 
to the house of Hanover, and promised that "You shall 
ever find in me as faithful a subject as ever any king had." 
The new king, however, declined to trust to the faithful- 
ness of this subject; and a year after the faithful subject 
had returned to his Jacobite convictions, and was gather- 
ing the Highland clans in James Stuart's name. 

The elans were got together at Braemar. The white 
cockade was mounted there by clan after clan, the Mac- 
intoshes being the first to display it as the emblem of the 
Stuart cause. Inverness was seized. King James was 
proclaimed at several places, notably at Dundee, by Gra- 
ham, the brother of "conquering Graham," Bonnie Dun- 
dee, the fearless, cruel, clever Claverhouse who fell at 
Killiocrankie. Perth was secured. The force under 



34 



A HISTORY OF 'HIE FOUR GEORGES. 



Mar's leadership grew greater every day. He had begun 
with a handful of men. He had now a little army. He 
had set up his standard almost at haphazard al Braemar, 
and now nearly all the country north of the Tay was in 
the hands of the Jacobites. 

The Duke of Argyll was put in command of the royal 
forces, and arrived in Sent land in the middle of September, 
1715. He hastened to the camp, which hail been got to- 
gether somehow at Stirling. lie came there almost liter- 
ally alone. He brought no soldiers with him. He found 
few soldiers there to receive him. Under his command 
he had altogether about a thousand foot and half as many 
dragoons, the latter consisting in great measure of the fa- 
mous and excellent Scots Grays. His prospect looked in- 
deed very doubtful. He could expect little or no assist- 
ance from his own clan. They had work enough to do 
in guarding against a possible attack from some of the 
followers of Lord Mar. Glasgow, Dumfries, and other 
towns were likewise in imminent danger from some of the 
Highland clans, and were kept in a continual agony of 
apprehension. It seemed likely enough that Argyll might 
soon be surrounded at Stirling. If Mar had only made a 
forward movement it is impossible to say what degree of 
success he might not have accomplished. It seems almost 
marvellous, when we look back and survey the state of 
things, to see what a miserable force the Government had 
to rely upon. In the whole country they had only about 
eight thousand men. They had more men abroad than at 
home, and in the critical condition of things which still 
prevailed upon the Continent, it did not seem clear that 
they could, except in the very last extremity, bring home 
many of the men whom they kept abroad. Of that little 
force of eight thousand soldiers they did not venture to 
send a considerable proportion up to the North. They 
had, perhaps, good reason. They did not know yet where 
the serious blow was to be struck for the Stuart cause. 
Many of George's counsellors still looked upon the move- 
ment in Scotland as something merely in the nature of 
a feint. They believed that the real blow would yet be 
struck by Ormond in the West of England. 

But, the evil fortune which hung Over the Stuart cause 
in all its later days clung to it now. There was no con- 
ceivable reason why Mar should not have marched south- 
ward. The forces of the King were few in number, and 
were not well placed for the purpose of making any con- 
siderable resistance. But in an enterprise like that of 
Mar all depends upon rapidity of movement. What we 
may call the ultimate resources of the country were in the 
hands of the King and his adherents. Every day's delay 
enabled them to grow stronger. Every day's delay be- 
yond a certain time discouraged and weakened the in- 
vaders. Mar might, at one critical moment, have swept 
Argyll's exhausted troops before him, but, he was feeble 
and timorous ; he dallied; he let the time pass ; he allowed 
Argyll to get away without making an effort to attack 
him. It was then that, one of the Gordon clan broke into 
that memorable exclamation, "Oh for one hour of Dun- 
dee!" — the exclamation which Byron has paraphrased in 
the line, 

Oh fur one hour (if blind old Dandolo ! 

Certainly one hour of Dundee might, at more than one 
crisis in this melancholy si niggle, have secured for the time 
the cause of the Stuarts, and won for James at least a tem- 
porary occupation of the throne of his ancestors. Mar's 
little force remained motionless long enough to allow the 
Duke of Argyll to get sufficient strength to make an at- 
tack upon it at Sheriffmuir. Sheriffmuir was not much of 
a victory. Each side, in fact, claimed the conqueror's hon- 
or. Mar was no1 annihilated, nor Argyll driven back. 
The Duke of Argyll probably lost more of his men, but. 
on the other hand, lie captured many guns and standards, 
and he re-appeared on the same held the next day, while 
Mar showed there no more. Tested in the only practical 



way, it is clear that the Duke of Argyll had the better of 
it. Lord Mar wanted to do something, and was prevented 
from doing it at, a time when to him everything depended 
on advance and on success. The Duke of Argyll success- 
fully interposed between Mar and his object, and therefore 
was clearly the victor. 

It is on record that no small share of Mar's ill-success 
was due to the action, or rather the inaction, of the fa- 
mous Highland outlaw, Rob Roy. He and his clan had 
joined Mar's standard, but his sympathies seem to have 
been with Argyll. He had an unusually large body of 
men under his command, for many of the clan Macpher- 
son had been committed to his leadership, in consequence 
of the old age of their chief; but at a critical moment 
he refused to lead his men to the charge, and stood on a 
hill with his followers unconcernedly surveying the fight. 
It is said that had he kept faith he could have turned the 
fortunes of the day. 

Argyll and the cause he represented could afford to 
wait, and Mar could not. The insurrection already be- 
gan to melt. James Stuart himself made his appearance 
in Scotland. He was characteristically late for Sheriff- 
muir, and when he did throw himself into the field he 
seemed unable to take any decisive step, or even to come 
lo any clear decision. He did not succeed in making 
himself popular, even for the moment, among his follow- 
ers in Scotland. The occasion was one in which gallant 
bearing and kingly demeanor would have gone for much, 
anil indeed it is not at all impossible that a leader of a 
different stamp from James might even then have so 
inspired the Highland clansmen, and so made use of his 
opportunity, as to overwhelm Argyll and the Hanoverian 
forces, and turn the whole crisis to his favor. But, James 
was peculiarly unsuited to an enterprise of the kind. He 
had graceful maimers, a mild, serene temper, and great 
power of application to work. His personal courage was 
undoubted, and he was willing enough to risk his own 
life on any chance ; but he had none of the spirit of a 
commander. He was sometimes weak and sometimes ob- 
stinate. His very appearance was not in his favor among 
the Highland men, to whom he had previously been un- 
known. He was tall and thin, with pale face, and eyes 
that wanted fire and expression. His words were few, 
his behavior always sedate and somewhat depressed. 
Here, among the Scottish clansmen on the verge of re- 
bellion, he seemed utterly borne down by the greatness 
of the enterprise. He was wholly unable to infuse any- 
thing like spirit, or hope into his followers. On the con- 
trary, his appearance among them, when he did show 
himself, had a dispiriting and a depressing effect on al- 
most every mind. Those who remember the manner and 
demeanor of the late Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the 
French, the silent shyness, the appearance of almost con- 
stant depression, which were characteristic of that sover- 
eign, will, we think, be easily able to form a clear idea of 
the effect that James Stuart produced among his follow- 
ers in Scotland. He did not care to see the soldiers exer- 
cise, and handle their arms ; he avoided going among them 
as much as possible. The men at last began to feel amis- 
trust of his courage — the one great quality which he cer- 
tainly did not lack. A feeling of something like contempt 
began to spread abroad. "Can he speak at all?" some 
of the soldiers asked, lie was all ice ; his very kindness 
was freezing. A man like Dundee called to such an en- 
terprise would have set the clans of Scotland aflame with 
enthusiasm. James Stuart was only a chilling and a dis- 
solving influence. His more immediate military counsel- 
lors were like himself, and their only policy seemed to 
he one of postponement and delay. They advised him 
against action of every kind. The clansmen grew impa- 
tient. At Berth, one devoted Highland chief actually 
suggested that James should be taken away by force from 
his advisers, and brought among men who were ready to 
fight. "If he is willing to die like a prince," said this 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



35 



man, "he will find there are ten thousand gentlemen in 
Scotland who are willing to die with him." If James had 
followed the bent of his own disposition, he might even 
thru have died like a prince, or gone on to a throne. His 
opponents were as little inclined for action as his own im- 
mediate advisers. The Duke of Argyll himself delayed 
making an advance until peremptory orders were sent to 
him from London. So long, and with so little excuse, did 
he delay, that statesmen in London suspected, not unrea- 
sonably, that Argyll was still willing to give James Stuart 
a chance, or was not yet quite certain whether the cause 
of the Stuarts was wholly lost. It is characteristic of the 
time that so long as there seemed any possibility of James 
redeeming his crown Argyll's own colleagues suspected 
that Argyll was not willing to put himself personally in 
the way. At last, however, the peremptory order came 
that Argyll must advance upon Perth. The moment the 
advance became apparent, the counsellors of James Stu- 
art insisted on a retreat. On a day of ill omen to the 
Stuart cause, the 30th of January, 1716, the anniversary 
of the day when Charles the First was executed, the re- 
treat from Perth was resolved on. That retreat was the 
end of the enterprise. Many Jacobites had already made 
up their minds that the struggle was over, that there was 
nothing better to be done than to disperse before the ad- 
vancing troops of King George, that the sooner the forces 
of James Stuart melted away, and James Stuart himself 
got back to France, the better. James Stuart went back 
to France, and the clansmen returned to their homes. 
Some of the Roman Catholic gentlemen rose in North- 
umberland, and endeavored to form a junction with a 
portion of Mar's force which had come southward to 
meet them. The English Jacobites, however, were de- 
feated at Preston, and compelled to surrender. After a 
voyage of five days in a small vessel, James succeeded in 
reaching Gravelines safely on the 8th of February, 1716. 
His whole expedition had not occupied him more than 
six weeks. 

It was believed at the time that the counsels of the 
Dnke of Marlborough were, mainly instrumental in bring- 
ing about the prompt suppression of the rebellion. Marl- 
borough's advice was asked with regard to the military 
movements and dispositions to be made, and the belief of 
the day was that it was his counsel, and the manner in 
which the Government followed it out, which led to the 
utter overthrow of James Stuart and the dispersion of his 
followers. Marlborough is said to have actually told in 
advance the very time at which, if his advice were follow- 
ed, the rebellion could be put down. Nothing is more 
likely than that Marlborough's advice should have been 
sought and should have been given. It would not in the 
least degree militate against the truth of the story that the 
outbreak took place so soon after Marlborough had been 
professing the most devoted attachment to the cause of the 
Stuarts, and had declared, as we have said already, that 
he would rather cut off his right hand than do anything 
to injure the claims of the Chevalier St. George. But it 
would not seem that any advice Marlborough might have 
given was followed out very strictly in the measures taken 
to put. down the rebellion. We may be sure that Marl- 
borough's would have been military counsel worthy of the 
greatest commander of his age. But in the measures taken 
to put down the rebellion we can see nothing but incapac- 
ity, vacillation, and even timidity. An energetic man in 
Argyll's position, seeing how .lame-; Stuart halted and fluct- 
uated, must have made up his mind at once that a rapid 
and bold movement would finish the rebellion, and we find 
no such movement made, until at last the most peremptory 
orders from London compelled Argyll at all hazards to ad- 
vance. If then Marlborough gave his advice in London, 
which is very likely, it would seem that, for some reason 
or other, the advice was not followed by the commanders 
in the field. The whole story reminds one of the belief 
long entertained in France, and which we suppose has some 



votaries there still, that the great success of the Duke of 
Wellington, in the latter part of the war against Napo- 
leon, was due to the military counsels of Dumouriez, then 
an exile in London. 

There was a plan for the capture of Edinburgh Castle, 
which, like other Stuart enterprises, would have been a 
great thing if it had only succeeded. Edinburgh Castle 
was then full of arms, stores, and money. Some eighty 
of the Jacobites, chiefly Highlanders, contrived a well-laid 
scheme by which to get possession of the Castle. They 
managed by bribes and promises to win over three soldiers 
in the Castle itself. The arrangement was that these men 
were to be furnished with ladders of a peculiar construc- 
tion suited to the purpose, which, at a certain hour of the 
night, they were to lower down the Castle rock on the 
north side — the side looking on the Prince Street of our 
day. By these ladders the assailants were epiietly to 
ascend, and then overpower the little garrison, and pos- 
sess themselves of the Castle. When the stroke had been 
done, they were to fire three cannon, and men station- 
ed on the opposite coast of Fife were thereupon to light 
a beacon ; and the flash of that light would be the 
signal for other beacons from hill to hill to bear the news 
to Mar — as the lights along the Argive hills carried the 
tale of Troy's fall to Argos. The plan was an utter fail- 
ure. It. broke down in two places. One of the conspira- 
tors told his brother ; the brother told his wife ; the lady 
took alarm, and sent an anonymous letter disclosing the 
wdiole plot to the Lord Justice Clerk. Yet even then, 
had the conspirators been in time, their plan might have 
succeeded ; for the anonymous letter did not reach its 
destination till an hour after the time appointed to make 
the attempt on the Castle. But the conspirators were not 
punctual. Some of them were in a tavern in Edinburgh, 
drinking to the success of their enterprise. Every one in 
the neighborhood seems to have known what their enter- 
prise was, to have had some sympathy with it, to have 
talked freely about it. Eighteen of these heroes kept up 
their conviviality in the tavern till long after the appoint- 
ed time. The hostess of the place was heard to say that 
they were powdering their hair to go to the attack on the 
Castle. " A strange sort of powder," Lord Stanhope re- 
marks, " to provide on such an occasion." Lord Stanhope 
evidently takes the hostess's words in a literal sense, and 
believes that the lady really meant to say that the jovial 
conspirators were actually powdering their locks as if for 
a ball. We may assume that the hostess spoke as Ham- 
let did, "tropically." Whether she did or not — whether 
they were really adorning their locks, or simply draining 
the flagon — the result was all the same. They came too 
late; the plot was discovered; the sympathizing soldiers 
from the Castle were already under arrest. The conspir- 
ators had to disperse and fly ; a few of them were arrest- 
ed ; their neighbors were only too willing to help them 
to escape. It. cannot be doubted that there was sympathy 
enough in Edinburgh to have made their plan the begin- 
ning of a complete success — if it had only itself been al- 
lowed to succeed. But the disclosure to the lady, and the 
powder for the hair, brought all to nothing. The whole 
story might almost be said to be an allegorical illustration 
of the fortunes of the Stuarts. The pint and the petticoat 
always came in the way of a success to that cause. 

When James l'eached Gravelines, he hurried on to St. 
Germains. There, the next, morning, Bolingbroke came 
to see him. Bolingbroke, to do him justice, had done all 
in his power to dissuade James from making his fatal ex- 
pedition at such a time, and under such untoward circum- 
stances. He had shown judgment, prudence, and, in the 
true sense, courage. He had shown himself a statesman. 
He might very well have met James in the mood and with 
the remonstrances of the counsellors who, after the event, 
are able to say, " I told you so." But Bolingbroke ap- 
pears to have had more discretion and more manliness. 
He advised James to withdraw once again from the do- 



86 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



minions of the King, and take refuge in Lorraine. Bol- 
ingbroke knew well, by this time, that there was not the 
slightesl chance of any open assistance from the French 
Court; and even thai the French Court would be only 
too reads to throw James over, and sacrifice him, if, by 

doing so, tlie\ could strengthen the bonds of g 1 feeling 

between Fr se and England. James professed to take 

Bolingbroke's counsel in very friendly fashion, and parted 
from Bolingbroke with many expressions of confidence 
and affection. Yet it is certain that at this time he had 

mad ' li|i his mind not to see Bolingbroke any more. He 

went for a t ime to a house near Versailles, a kind of head- 
quarters of intriguing political women, and thence imme- 
diately despatched a letter to Bolingbroke, relieving him of 
all his duties as Secretary df State. Bolingbroke affects 
to have taken his dismissal very composedly, bul ii cannot 
be doubted thai his heart burned within him at what he, 
doubtless, believed to be the ingratitude of the prince for 
whom he had done and sacrificed so much. For Boling- 
broke had that unlucky gift of fancy which enables a man 
to see himself, and his own doings, and his own merits, in 
whatever lighl is most gratifying to his personal vanity. 
lie had, iii truth, never risked nor sacrificed anything for 
the sake of .lames or the Stuart cause. He never had the 
least idea of risking or sacrificing anything for that cause, 
or for any other. It was only when his fortunes in Eng- 
land beoame desperate; when impeachment, and, as he be- 
lieved, a scaffold threatened him, when he had no apparent 
alternative left but to join the Pretender or stay at home 
and lose all — it was only then that he look any decided 
step as an adherent of the cause of the Stuarts. We can- 
not doubt that .lames Stuart knew to the full the part I hat 
Bolingbroke had played. He knew that he owed Boling- 
broke no favor, and that he could have no confidence m 

him. Still, it remains to the present hour a mystery why 

.lames should i hen, and in that manner, have got rid of Bol- 
ingbroke forever, Bolingbroke himself does not appear to 
have known the cause of his dismissal. It may he that 
James had grown tired of the whole fruitless struggle, 
anil was glad to eel rid of a minister whose restless ener- 
gy and genius would always have kepi political intrigue 
alive, and political enterprises going. Or it may he that 
just then there had fallen into James's hands some new 
and recent evidences of Bolingbroke's willingness to treat, 
on occasion, with either side. However this may he, 
James made up his mind to dismiss his great follower, 
and Bolingbroke at once made up his mind to endeavor 
to ingratiate himself into the favor of the House of Han- 
over, and to secure his restoration to London society. Al- 
most al the very moment of his dismissal he made appli- 
cation to some of his friends in London to endeavor to 
obtain for him a permission to return. 

We do not absolutely say a farewell to Bolingbroke 
now and here, as he stands dismissed from the Service of 
the Stuarts and disqualified for the service of the Hano- 
verians. Nearly forty years of life were yet before him, 
hut his work as a statesman was done. Never again had 
his senilis a chance of shining in the service of a throne. 
The master politician of the age was out id' employment 
forever. We do not know if history anywhere supplies 
such another example of a great political career snapped 
oil' so suddenlj at its midst, hardly even at its midst, and 
n \ it put toget her again. Bolingbroke re-appeared again 
and again in Fuel and. He even took more than once a cer- 
tain kind of part in politics— that is in pamphleteering; 
he tried to he the inspirat ion and the guiding-Star of Pulte- 
ii. 'V and other rising men who had come, for one reason or 
another, to detest Walpole. Hut even these soon began 

to find Bolingbroke rather more of a hinderance than a 
help, and were glad to shake him off ami he rid of him. 
He becomes everything by turns; plays at cool philoso- 
phy and philosphic retreat : is always assuring the world 
in tones of highly suspicious eagerness that he is done 
forever with it and its works and pomps; and he is al- 



ways yearning and striving to get hack to the works and 
pomps again. He plays at farming, actually puts en coun- 
trified manners, and dines ostentatiously oil' homely farm- 
er-like fare, to the amusement of some. of his friends, lie 

Lertakes to settle the whole question of religion, of this 

world and the next, including the entire code of human 
ethics ; and at the same time he is very fond of expatiat- 
ing to young men Concerning the most effective ways for 
the seduction of women, the course to he followed with a 
lady of quality, the different course in dealing with an ac- 
tress, the policy of a long siege, and the policy of an at- 
tack by storm. lie marries again and gets money with 
his wife, a French marquise, once heaut ii'ul, somewhat 
older than himself, and seems to he fond of her and happy 
with her, and discourses to her as to others about the va- 
riety of his successful amours. Through long, long years 
his shadow, his ghost, for in the political sense it is noth- 
ing else, keeps revisiting the glimpses of the moon in Eng- 
land. For all the influence he is destined to have on the 
realities of political life, he might as well lie already lying 
in that tomh in the old church on the edge of the Thames 
at Lai tersea where his strangely brilliant, strangely blight- 
ed career is to come to an end at last. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

AFTER THE REBELLION. 

All ihis time the Jacobite demonstrations were still 
going on in London and in various parts of England with 
as much energy as ever. Green boughs and oak apples 
were worn, and even Haunted ahoiit the si reels, by groups 
of pel-sons on May 29th, che anniversary of Charles the 
Second's restoration. We read of the riots in London, of 
Whigs of the "Loyal Society " going ahoiit with little 
warming-pans as emblems of their hostility to the Stuart 
cause, and being met by other mohs hearing white roses 
as badges of the Stuart cause. There was a continual 
battle of pamphleteers and of ballad - writers. " High- 
Church and Ormond !" were shouted for and sung on one 
side of the political Held, and the "Pope and Perkin," 
that is to say, James Stuart, were as liberally denounced 
on the Other. The scandals about King George's mis- 
tresses weie freely alluded to in the Jacobite songs. The 
public of all parties seem to have very cordially detested 
the ill-favored ladies whom George had brought over 
from Hanover. The coarsest and grossest abuse was 
poured forth in ballads and in pamphlets against the 
King's favorites and courtiers, and was sung and shout- 
ed day and night in the public streets. 

Then, and for long after, these public streets were bat- 
tle-grounds on which WhigS and Tories, Hanoverians and 
Jacobites, fought out their quarrel. Men carried turnips 
in their hats in mockery of the German elector who had 
threatened to make St. James's Park a turnip-field, and 
wire prepared to tight lustily for their bucolic emblem. 
Women fanned the strife, wore while roses for the King 
over the water, or Sweet William, in compliment to the 
".immortal memory " of William of Nassau. Sometimes 
even women were roughly treated. On one occasion we 
read of a serving-girl, who had made known the hiding- 
place of a Jacobite, being attacked ami nearly murdered 
by a Jacobite mob, ami rescued by some Whig gentle- 
men. On another occasion a Whig gentleman seeing a 
young lady in the street will) a while rose in her hosoni, 
jumped from his coach, lore mil the disloyal blossom, 
lashed the voting lady with his whip, and handed her 
oxer to a gang of Whigs, who would have stripped and 
scourged her hut for the timely appearance of sonic Jaco- 
bite gentry, by whom she was carried home in safety. 
The " Flying Post" warns all "he-Jacobites" and " she- 
Jacohites " that if they are not careful they w ill meet 
with more severe treatment .than hitherto, and linn alludes 
to some pretty severe treatment the pom- " she-Jacobites " 
had already received. 



A HISTORY" OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



37 



To do the King and Ins family justice, they behaved 
with courage and composure through this long season 
of popular excitement. They went everywhere as they 
pleased, braving t lu- dangers that certainly existed. Once 
a man named Moor spat in the face of the Princess of 
Wales as she was going through the streets, and he was 

31 rged till he cried " God bless King George!" In 

IV is a youth named Sheppard was hanged for planning 
King George's death, This led a Hanoverian fanatic 
named Bowes to suggefil to the ministry that in return 
he should go to [talj and kill King James. His proffer 
of political retaliation only resulted in his being shut up 
as a madman. At last the temper of the times and the 
frequent threats of assassination compelled the King to 
take more care of himself. Though he walked in Ken- 
sington Gardens every day, the gardens were first searched, 
and then carefully watched by soldiers. 

When the rebellion was over, the Government found 
they hail a Large number of prisoners on their hands, 
many of them of high rank. Several officers taken on 
the field had already been treated as deserters and shot, 
after a trial by drum-head court-martial. Some of the 
prisoners of higher rank were brought into London in a 
manner like that of captives dragged along in an old 
Roman triumph, or like that of actual convicts taken to 
Tyburn. They were inarched in procession from High- 
gate through London, each man sitting on a horse, hav- 
ing his arms tied with cords behind his hack, the horses 
led by soldiers, with a military escort drumming and tiling 
a inarch of triumph. The men of noble rank were con- 
fined in the Tower; others, many of them men of posi- 
tion, such as Mr. Thomas Forster, a Northumberland gen- 
tleman, and member for his county, were thrust into 
Newgate, whose horrors have been so well described in 
Scott's "Rob Roy." The Rev. Robert Patten, who had 
been a conspicuous Jacobite, played a Titus Oates part 
in betraying his companions, and his name figures for 
King's e\ idence incessantly in the political trials. When 
he tired of treachery he retired to the obscurity of his 
parish of Allendale, in Northumberland, and gave the 
world his history of the rebellion in which he had played 
so base a part. 

Among the chief prisoners were Lord Widdrington, 
the Earl of Nithisdale, the Earl of Wintoun, the Karl of 
Carnwath, the Earl of Derwentwater, Viscount Kenmure, 
and Lord Nairn. These noblemen were impeached be- 
fore the House of Lords, and all, except Lord Wintoun, 
pleaded guilty, and prayed for the mercy of the King. 
Every effort was made to obtain a pardon for some of 
the condemned noblemen. Women of rank and beauty 
implored the King's mercy. Audacious attempts were 
made to bribe the ministers. Some eminent members of 
the Whig party in the House of Commons spoke up man- 
fully ami courageously in favor of a policy of mercy. It 
is something pleasant to recollect that Sir Richard Steele, 
who had got into Parliament again, was conspicuous 
among these. In the Souse of Lords the friends of the 

condemned men succeeded in carrying, despite the sti g 

resistance of the Government, a motion for an address to 
the King, beseeching him to extend mercy to the noble- 
men in prison. Walpole himself had spoken very harshly 
in the House of Commons, and condemned in unmeas- 
ured terms those of his party — the Whig party — who 
could fie so unworthy as, without blushing, to open their 
mouths in favor of rebels and parricides, and he hail car- 
ried an adjournment of the House of Commons from the 
U'jil of February to the 1st of March, in order to prevent 
any further petitions in favor of the rebel lords from be- 
ing presented before the day fixed for their execution. 

One of these petitions, it is worth while recollecting, was 
presented by the kindly hand and supported bj (lie man- 
ly voice of sir Richard Steele. The ministers returned a 
merelj formal answer on the King's behalf to I lit' address, 
hut they thought it wise to recommend a respite to be 



given to Lord Nairn, the Earl of Carnwath, and Lord 
Widdrington ; and in order to get rid of any further ap- 
peals for mercy, thej resolved that the execution of Lord 
Nithisdale, Lord 1 >er\vent water, and Lord Kenmure should 
take place the very next day. Lord Nithisdale, however, 
was lucky enough to make his escape, somewhat after the 
fashion in which Lavalette, at a much later date, con- 
trived to oet out of prison, by the courage, devotion, and 
ingenuity of his wife. It is a curious fact that most of 
the contemporaries of Nithisdale who tell the story of 
his escape have represented ins mother, and not his wife, 
as the woman who took his place in prison, and to whose 
energy and adroitness he owed his life. Smollett is one 
of those who give this version as if there were no doubt 
about it. Lord Stanhope, in the lirst edition of his "His- 
tory of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace 
of Versailles," accepted the story on authorities which 
seemed so trustworthy. Lord Stanhope knew that many 
modern writers had described the escape as being effected 
by Lord Nithisdale's wife, but he assumed thai "the name 
of the wife was substituted in later tradition as being 
more romantic." A letter from Lady Nithisdale herself, 
written to her sister, settles the whole question, and of 
course Lord Stanhope immediately adopted this genuine 
version. Lady Nithisdale tells how at first she endeav- 
ored to present a petition to,, the King. The first day she 
heard that the King was to go to the drawing-room, she 
dressed herself in black, as if in mourning, and had a lady 
to accompany her. because she did not know the King 
personally, and might have mistaken some other man for 
him. This lady and another came with her, and the three 
remained in the room between the King's apartments and 
the drawing-room. When George was passing through, 
"I threw myself at his feet, and told him in French that 
I was the unfortunate Countess of Nithisdale. . . . Per- 
ceiving that lie wanted to go off without receiving my 
petition, I caught hold of the skirt of his coat that lie 
might stop and hear me. He endeavored to escape out 
of my hands, but I kept such strong hold that In- dragged 
me upon my knees from the middle of the room to the 
very door of the drawing-room." One of the attendants 
of the King caught the unfortunate lady round the waist, 
while another dragged the King's coat-skirt out of her 
hands. "The petition, which I had endeavored to thrust 
into his pocket, fell down in the scuffle, and I almost- 
fainted away through grief and disappointment." Sel- 
dom, perhaps, in the history of royalty is there a descrip- 
tion of so ungracious, unkingly, and even brutal reception 
of a petition presented by a distracted wife praying for 
a pardon to her husband. 

Then Lady Nithisdale determined to effect her hus- 
hand's escape. She communicated her design to a J\Irs. 
.Mills, and took another lady with her also. This lady 
was of tall and slender make, and she carried under her 
own riding-hood one that I,ad\ Nithisdale had prepared 
for Mrs. Mills, as Mrs. Mills was to lend hers to Lord 
Nithisdale, so that in going out he might be taken for 
her. Mrs. Mills was also "not only of the same height, 
but nearly of the same size as my lord." On their arri- 
val at the Tower, .Mrs. Morgan was allowed to go in with 
Lady Nithisdale. Only one at a time could be intro- 
duced by the lady. She left the riding-hood and other 
things behind her. Then Lady Nithisdale went down- 
stairs to meet Mrs. Mills, who held her handkerchief to 
her face, "as was very natural for a woman to do when 
she was going to bid her last farewell to a friend on the 
eve of his execution. I had indeed desired her to do it, 
that my lord might go out in the same manner." .Mrs. 
Mills's eyebrows wen/ a light color, and Lord Nithisdale's 
were dark and thick. "So," says Lad)- Nithisdale, " I 
had prepared some paint of the color of hers to disguise 
his with. I also bought an artificial head-dress of the 
same color as hers, and I painted his face with white, and 
his cheeks with rouge to hide his long beard, which he 



38 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



had not time to shave. All this provision I had before 
left in the Tower. The poor guards, whom my slight 
liberality the day before had endeared me to, let me go 
quietly with my company, and w^-re not so strictly on the 
watch as they usually had been, and the more so as they 
were persuaded, from what I had told them the day be- 
Fore, that the prisoners would obtain their pardon." Then 
Mrs. Mills was taken into the room with Lord Nithisdale, 
and rather ostentatiously led by Lady Nithisdale past 
several sentinels, and through a group of soldiers, and of 
the guards' wives and daughters. When she got into 
Lord Nithisdale's presence she took off her riding-hood, 
and put on that which Mrs. Morgan had brought for her. 
Then Lady Nithisdale dismissed her, and took care that 
she should not go out weeping as she had come in, in or- 
der, of course, that Lord Nithisdale, when he went out, 
" might the better pass for the lady who came in crying 
and afflicted." "When Mrs. Mills was gone, Lady Nithis- 
dale dressed up her husband " in all my petticoats except- 
ing one." Then she found that it was growing dark, and 
«:is afraid that the light of the candles might betray her. 
She therefore went out, leading the disguised nobleman 
by the hand, lie holding his handkerchief pressed to his 
eyes, as Mrs. Mills had done when she came in. The 
guards opened the doors, and Lady Nithisdale went 
down-stairs with him. "As soon as he had cleared the 
door I made him walk before me for fear the sentinels 
should take notice of his walk." Some friends received 
Lord Nithisdale, and conducted him to a place of secur- 
ity. Lady Nithisdale went back to her husband's prison, 
and "When I was in the room I talked to him as if he 
had been really present, and answ T ered my own questions 
in my lord's voice as nearly as I could imitate it. I 
walked up and down, as it we were conversing together, 
till I thought they had time enough to clear themselves 
of the guards. I then thought proper to make off also. 
I opened the door, and stood half in it, that those in the 
outward chamber might hear what I said, but held it so 
close that they could not look in. I bid my lord a for- 
mal farewell for that night," and she added some words 
about the petition for his pardon, and told him, "I flat- 
tered myself that I should bring favorable news." Then 
she closed the door with some force behind her, and "I 
said to the servant as I passed by" — who was ignorant 
of the whole transaction — "that he need not carry any 
candles to his master till my lord sent for him, as he de- 
sired to finish some prayers first. I went down-stairs and 
called a coach, as there were several on the stand. I 
drove home to my lodgings." Soon after Lady Nithis- 
dale was taken to the place of security where her hus- 
band was remaining. They took refuge at the Venetian 
ambassador's two or three days after. Lord Nithisdale 
put on a livery, and went in the retinue of the ambassa- 
dor to Dover. The ambassador, it should be said, knew T 
nothing about the matter, but his cqach-and-six went to 
Dover to meet his brother ; and it was one of the ser- 
vants of the embassy who acted in combination with 
Lord and Lady Nithisdale. A small vessel was hired at 
Dover, and Lord Nithisdale escaped to Calais, where his 
wife shortly after joined him. It is said by nearly all 
contemporary writers that King George, when he heard 
of the escape, took it very good - humoredly, and even 
expressed entire satisfaction with it. Lady Nithisdale 
docs not seem to have believed this story of George's 
generosity. The statement made to her w^as that " when 
the news was brought to the King, he flew into an excess 
of passion and said he was betrayed, for it could not have 
been done without some confederacy, lie instant!) de- 
spatched two persons to the Tower to see that the other 
prisoners were well secured." 

Lord Derwcntwater and Lord Kenmure were executed 
on Tower Hill on the 2 1th of February. The young and 
gallant .Derwcntwater declared on the scaffold that he 
withdrew his plea of guilty, and that he acknowledged 



no one but James Stuart as his king. Kenmure, too, pro- 
tested his repentance at having, even formally, pleaded 
guilty, and declared that he died with a prayer for James 
Stuart. Lord Wintoun was not tried until the next month, 
lie was a poor and feeble creature, hardly sound in his 
mind. "Not perfect in his intellectuals," a writer in a 
journal of the day observed of him. He was found guilty, 
but afterwards succeeded in making his escape from the 
Tower. Like Lord Nithisdale, he made his way to the Con- 
tinent, and, like Lord Nithisdale, he died long after at Rome. 

Humbler Jacobites could escape too. Forster escaped 
from Newgate through the aid of a clever servant; and 
got off to France, while the angry Whigs hinted at con- 
nivance on the part of persons in high places. The re- 
doubted Brigadier Mackintosh, who figures in descriptions 
of the time as a " beetle- browed, gray -eyed " man of 
sixty, speaking "broad Scotch," succeeded in escaping, 
together with his son and seven others, in a rush of pris- 
oners from the Newgate press -yard. Mr. Charles Rad- 
cliffe had an even stranger escape; for one day, growing 
tired, as well he might, of prison life, he simply walked 
out of Newgate under the eyes of his jailers, in the easy 
disguise of a morning suit and a brown tie-wig. Once 
some Jacobite prisoners, who were being sent to the 
West Indian plantations, rose against the crew, seized 
the ship, steered it to France, and quietly settled down 
there. Later still some prisoners got out even more easi- 
ly. Brigadier Mackintosh's brother was discharged from 
Newgate on his own prayer, and on showing that " he 
was very old, and altogether friendless." 

Immediately after the execution of the rebel noblemen 
the ministry set to work to take some steps which might 
render political intrigue and conspiracy less dangerous in 
the future. One idea which especially commended itself 
to the statesmen of that time was to make the laws 
more rigorous against Roman Catholics. Law and popu- 
lar feeling were already strongly set against the Catho- 
lics. On the death of Queen Anne, officers in the army, 
when informing their companies of the accession of the 
Elector of Hanover, carried their loyal and religious en- 
thusiasm so far as to call upon any of their hearers who 
might be Catholics to fall forthwith out of the ranks. 
The writers who supported the Hanoverian succession, 
and were in the service of the Whig ministry, were not 
ashamed to declare that the ceremony of the Paternoster 
would infallibly cure a stranger of the spleen, and that 
any man in his senses would find excellent comedy in the 
recital of an Ave Mary. " Row •common it is," says the 
writer of the Patriot, " to find a wretch of this persuasion 
to be deluded to such a degree that he shall imagine him- 
self engaged in the solemnity of devotion, while in reality 
he is exceeding the fopperies of a Jack-pudding !" So 
great was the distrust of Catholics that it was often the 
practice to seize upon the horses of Catholic gentlemen 
in order to impede them in the risings which they were 
always supposed to lie meditating. But the condition of 
the Catholics in England was not bad enough to content 
the ministry. An Act was passed, in fact what would now 
be called " rushed," through Parliament, to "strengthen 
the Protestant interest in Great Britain," by making more 
severe "the laws now in being against Papists," and by 
providing a more effective and exemplary punishment 
for persons who, being Papists, should venture to eidist 
in the service of his Majesty. 

The spirit of political freedom, as we now understand 
it, had not yet even begun to glimmer upon the counsels 
of statesmen. The idea had not yet arisen in the minds 
of Englishmen — even of men as able as Walpole — that 
liberty meant anything more than liberty for the expres- 
sion of one's own opinions, and for the carrying into ac- 
tion of one's own policy. Those who were in power im- 
mediately made it their business to strengthen their own 
hands, and to prevent as far as possible the growth of 
opinions, the expression of ideas, unfavorable to them- 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



30 



selves. Yet at such a time there were not wanting advo- 
cates of the administration to write that it was ''indeed 
the peculiar happiness and glory of an Englishman that 
he must first quit these kingdoms before he can experi- 
mentally know the want of public liberty." Most people, 
even still, read history by the light 01 ideas which pre- 
vailed up to the close of George the First's reign. We 
are all ready enough to admit that in our time it would 
net be a free system which suppressed or prevented the 
expression of other men's opinions, or which attached any 
manner of penal consequence to the profession of one 
creed or the adhesion to one party. But most of us 
are, nevertheless, ready enough to describe one period 
of English history, the reign perhaps of one sovereign, as 
a period of religious liberty, and another season, or reign, 
as a time when liberty was suppressed. Some English- 
men talk with enthusiasm of the spirit of Elizabeth's 
reign, or the spirit of the reign of William the Third, and 
condemn in unmeasured terms the spirit which influenced 
James the Second, and which would no doubt have in- 
fluenced James the Second's son if he had come to the 
throne. But any one who will put aside for the moment 
his own particular opinions will see that in both cases 
the guiding principle was exactly the same. Never were 
there greater acts of political and religious intolerance 
committed than during the reign of Elizabeth and during 
the reign of William the Third. The truth is that the 
modern idea of constitutional and political liberty did not 
exist among English statesmen even so recently as the 
reign of William the Third. At the period with which 
we are now dealing it would not have occurred to any 
statesman that there could be a wiser course to take than 
to follow up the suppression of the insurrection of 1715 
li\ making more stringent than ever the laws already in 
existence against the religion to which most of the rebels 
belonged. 

The Government made another change of a different 
kind, and for which there was better political justification. 
They passed a measure altering the period of the duration 
of parliaments. At this time the limit of the existence 
of a parliament was three years. An Act was passed in 
1041 directing that Parliament should meet once at least 
in every three years. This Act was repealed in 1664. 
Another, and a different kind of Triennial Parliament 
Bill, passed in 1694. This Act declared that no parlia- 
ment should last for a longer period than three years. 
But the system of short parliaments had not apparently 
been found to work with much satisfaction. The impres- 
sion that a House of Commons with so limited a period 
of life before it would be more anxious to conciliate the 
confidence. and respect of the constituencies had not been 
justified in practice. Indeed, the constituencies them- 
selves at that time were not sufficiently awake to the 
meaning and the value of Parliamentary representation 
to think of keeping any effective control over those 
whom they sent to speak for them in Parliament. Brib- 
ery and corruption were as rife and as extravagant un- 
der the triennial system as ever they had been before, or 
as they ever were since. But no doubt the immediate 
object of repealing the Triennial Bill was to obtain a 
better chance for the new condition of things by giving 
it a certain time to work in security. If the new dynasty 
was to have any chance of success at all, it was necessary 
that ministers should not have to come almost immedi- 
ai'ly before the country again. 

Shippen in the Commons ami Atterbury in the Lords 
were among the most strenuous opponents of the new 
measure. Both staunch Jacobites, they had everything 
io gain just then by frequent appeals to the country. 
Shippen urged that it was unconstitutional in a Parlia- 
ment elected for three years to elect itself for seven years 
without an appeal to the constituencies. Steele defended 
the Bill on the ground that all tin- mischief's which could 
be brought under the Septennial Act could be perpetrat- 



ed under the Triennial, but that the good which might 
be compassed under the Septennial could not be hoped 
for under the Triennial. Not a few persons in both 
Houses seemed to be of one mind with the bewildered 
Bishop of London, who declared that he did not know 
which way to vote, for " he was confounded between 
dangers and inconveniences on one side and destruction 
on the other." It is not out of place to mention here 
that when a Bill was unsuccessfully brought in, nearly 
twenty years after, for the Repeal of the Septennial Act", 
many of those who had voted in favor of parliaments of 
seven years in 1*716 voted the other way, while opponents 
in 1716 were turned into allies in 1734. 

The system of short parliaments has ardent admirers in 
our own day. "Annual Parliaments" formed one of the 
points of the People's Charter. Many who would not 
accept the Chartist idea of annual parliaments would still 
regard as one of the articles of the true creed of Liberal- 
ism the principle of the triennial parliament. But even 
if that creed were true in the politics of the present day, 
it would not have been true in the early days of King 
George. One of the great constitutional changes which 
the times were then making, and which Walpole welcomed 
and helped to carry out, was the change which gave to 
the House of Commons the real ruling power in the Con- 
stitution. No representative chamber could then have 
held its own against the House of Lords, or the Court, or 
the Court and the House of Lords combined, if it had 
been subject to the necessity of frecjuent re-elections. 
Short parliaments have even in our own days been made 
in Europe the most effective weapons of despotic power. 
No test more trying can be found for a party of men 
sincerely anxious to maintain constitutional rights at a 
season of danger than to subject them to frequent and 
close electoral struggles. Much more important in the 
historical and constitutional sense was it at the opening of 
King George's reign that the House of Commons should 
be strengthened than that any particular party should 
have unlimited opportunities of trying its chances at a 
general election. It mattered little, when once the posi- 
tion of the representative body had been made secure, 
whether George or James sat on the throne. With the 
representative body an inconsiderable factor in the State 
system, Brunswick would soon have been as unconstitu- 
tional as Stuart. 

One of the last acts of the life of Lord Somers was to 
express to Lord Townshend his approval of the principle 
of the Septennial Bill. He did not live to see it actually 
passed into law. He was but sixty-six years old at the 
time of his death. Disease and not age had weakened 
his fine intellect, and had kept him for many years from 
playing any important part in the affairs of the State. 
The day when Somers died was the very day when the 
Septennial Bill passed its third reading in the House of 
Commons. It had come down from the House of Lords, 
and had to go back to that House, in consequence of some 
alterations made in the Commons. Somers lived just long 
enough to be assured of its safety. Born in 1650, the 
son of a Worcester attorney, he had won for himself the 
proudest honors of the law, and had written his name 
high up in the roll of English statesmen. Steele wrote 
of him that he was "as much admired for his universal 
knowledge of men and things as for his eloquence, cour- 
age, and integrity in the exerting of such extraordinary 
talents." The Spectator, in dedicating its earliest papers 
to him, spoke of him as one who brought into the service 
of his sovereign the arts and policies of ancient Greece 
and Rome, and praised him for a certain dignity in him- 
self which made him appear as great in private life as in 
the most important offices hi' had borne. It was in allu- 
sion to Somers, indeed, that Swift said Bolingbroke wanted 
for success "a small infusion of the alderman." This 
was a sneer at Somers, as well as a sort of rebuke to Bol- 
ingbroke. If the "small infusion of the alderman" was 



40 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



another term for order and method in public business, 
then it may be freely admitted by his greatest admirers 
thai Sinners had inure of the alderman in his nature than 
Bolingbroke. Perhaps the only thing, except great ca- 
pacity, which he had in common with Bolingbroke was 
an ungovemed admiration of the charms of women. His 
fame was first established by the ability with which he 
conducted his pari id' the defence of the seven bishops in 
.lames tlie Second's reign. His consistent devotion to 
the Whig party, and his just and almost prescient appre- 
ciation of the true principles of that party, set him in 
sharp contrast to other statesmen of the time — to men 
like Marlborough and Shrewsbury and Bolingbroke. His 
is a noble figure, even in its decay, and the historian of 
such a time parts from him with regret, feeling that the 
average of public manhood and virtue is lowered when 
Sonicrs is gone. 

While Jacobites were lingering in prison and dying on 
Tower Hill, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was writing 
from abroad imperishable letters to her friends. We 
may turn away from politics for a moment to observe her 
and her career. Mr. Wortley Montagu had been ap- 
pointed Ambassador to Constantinople, and had set out 
for his post, accompanied by the witty and beautiful \\ ife 
for whom hi 1 cared so little. Ever since he first met her 
and presented her with a copy of "Quintus Curtius," in 
honor of her Lat inity, and some original verses of his 
own, in earnest of his admiration, he had been an exact- 
ing, impatient lover. Alter his marriage lie seems to 
have grown absolutely indifferent to her, leaving her 
alone for months together while he remained in town, 
and pleading as his excuse his Parliamentary duties. 
She who, on the contrary, had made no unreasonable dis- 
play of affection for the lover, appears to have become 
deeply attached to the husband, and to have been bitterly 
pained by his careless indifference, an indifference which 
at last, and it would appear most unwillingly, she learned 
to return. When this life ha,d been lived for a year or 
two Queen Anne died, anil with Walpole's accession to 
power Mr. Worthy got office, and brought his beautiful 
wife up from Yorkshire to be the wonder and admiration 
of the English Court and the Hanoverian monarch. For 
two bright years Lady Alary shone like a star in the brill- 
iant, constellation of women, id' wits, of politicians, and 
men of letters, who thronged St. James's Palace and peo- 
pled St. . I anus's parish. Then came the Constantinople 
embassy. Lady .Mary had always a longing for foreign 
travel, and now that her desires were gratified she en- 
joyed herself with all the delight of a child and all the 
intelligence of a gifted woman. Travel was a rare pleas- 
ure for women then. A young English gentleman made 
the grand lour, and brought back, if he were foolish, noth- 
ing better than a few receipts for strange dishes, and 
some newer notions of vice than he had set out with ; if 
lie were wise he became "possessed of the tongues," and 
bore home spoils of voyage in the shape of Titians and 
Correggios and Raphaels — genuine or the reverse — to 
stock a picture-gallery in the family mansion. But wom- 
en very seldom travelled much in those days. Certainly 
no man or woman could then write of travels as Mary 
Wortley Montagu could and did. We may well imagine 
the delight with which Mistress Skerret and Lady Rich 
and the Countess of Bristol, languid Lord Hervey's moth- 
er, and adoring Mr. Pope received these marvellous let- 
ters, which were destined to rank with the epistles of the 
younger Pliny and of Madame de Sevigne. Mr. Pope — 
whose translation of the " Odyssey " had not yet made 
its appearand — may well have thought that Ulysses him- 
self had not seen men and cities to greater advantage 
than the beautiful wanderer whom he was destined first 
to love and then to hate. As we read her letters we Seem 

to live with her in the great, gay, gloomy life of Vienna, 
to hear once more the foolish squabbles of Ratisbon so- 
ciety as to who should and should not, be styled Excel- 



lency, and to smile at the loyal crowds of English throng- 
ing "the wretched inns of Hanover. But the fidelity of 
her descriptions may best be judged from her accounts 
of life in Constantinople. The Vienna of to-day is very 
different from the ill-built, high -storied city "of Maria 
Theresa; bill the condition of Constantinople has scarce- 
ly changed with the century and a half that has gone by 
since Lady Mary was English Ambassadress there. She 
seems, indeed, to have seen the heads upon the famous 
monument of bronze twisted serpents in the Hippodrome; 
and perhaps she did, for Spun and Wholer's sketch of it 
in 1675 gives it with the triple heads still perfect, though 
these serpent heads, and all traces of them, have long since 
disappeared. In Constantinople Lady Mary first became 
acquainted with that principle of inoculation for the small- 
pox which she so enthusiastically advocated, which she in- 
troduced into England in spite of so much hostility and 
disfavor, and which, now accepted by almost all the civil- 
ized world, is still wrangled fiercely over in England. 

Perhaps we may anticipate by some half -century to 
tell of Lady Mary's further career. She came back to 
London again, and shone as brilliantly as before, and was 
made love to by Pope, and laughed at her lover, and was 
savagely scourged bj him in return with whips of sting- 
ing and shameful satire. One can understand better the 
story of the daughters id' Lycambes hanging themselves 
tinder the pain of the iambics of Archiloohils when one 
reads the merciless cruelty with which the great English 
satirist treated the woman he had loved. When Lady 
Mary grew old she went away abroad lo live, without any 
opposition on her husband's part. They parted with mut- 
ual indifference and mutual esteem. She lived for many 
years in Italy, chiefly in Venice. Then she came back to 
London for a short time to live in lodgings off Hanover 
Square, and be the curiosity of the town; and then she 
died. Lady Alary always had a dread of growing old ; 
and she grew old and ill-favored, as Horace Walpole was 
spiteful enough to put on record. When Pope was 
laughed at by the beauty, he might have said to her in 
the words that Clarendon used to the fair Castlemaine, 
" Woman, you will grow old," and have felt that in those 
words he had almost repaid the bitterness of her scorn. 
Horace Walpole indeed avenged the offended poet, long 
dead and famous, when he wrote thus of Lady Mary: 
" Her dress, her avarice, and her impudence must amaze 
any one that never heard her name. She wears a foul 
mob that does not cover her greasy black locks, that hang 
loose, never combed or curled ; an old mazarine blue 
wrapper, that gapes open and discovers a canvas petti- 
coat. Her face . . . partly covered . . . with white paint, 
which for cheapness she has bought so coarse that, you 
would not use it to wash a chimney." Such is one of the 
latest portraits of the woman who had been a poet's idol 
and the cherished beauty of a Court. Lady Alary, who 
had outlived her husband, left, an exemplary daughter, 
who married Lord Lute, and a most une.xemplary son, to 
whom she bequeathed one guinea., and who spent the 
greater part of his life drifting about the Last, and ac- 
quiring all kinds of strange and useless knowledge. 

CHAPTER IX. 

"MALICE DOMESTIC. — FOKEIOX LETT." 

Some of the earlier letters of Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu are written from Hanover, and give a lively 
description of the crowded state of that capital in the 
autumn of 1716. Hanover was crowded in this unusual 
way because King George was there at the time, and his 
presence was the occasion for a great gathering of diplo- 
matic functionaries and statesmen, and politicians of all 
orders. Some had political missions, open and avowed; 
some had missions of still greater political importance, 
which, however, were not formally avowed, and were for 
the most part conducted in secret. A turning-point had 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



41 



been readied in the affairs of Europe, and the King's 
visit to Hanover was an appropriate occasion for the pre- 
liminary steps to certain new arrangements that had be- 
come inevitable. Even before the King's visit to his 
dear Hanover the English Government had been pav- 
ing the way for some of these new combinations and alli- 
ances. The very day after the royal coronation, Stanhope 
had gone on a mission to Vienna which had something 
to do with the arrangements subsequently made. 

It would, however, be paying too high a compliment to 
the patriotic energy of the King to suppose that he had 
gone to Hanover for the sake of promoting arrangements 
calculated to be of advantage to England. Let us do 
justice to George's sincerity: he never pretended to any 
particular concern for English interests when they were 
not bound up with the interests of Hanover. But he had 
long been pining for a sight of Hanover. He had now 
been away from his beloved Herrenhausen for nearly two 
years, and he was consumed by an unconquerable home- 
sickness. That his absence might be inconvenient to his 
newly acquired country or to his ministers had no weight 
in his mind to counterbalance the desire of walking once 
more in the prim Herrenhausen avenues and looking over 
the level Hanoverian fields, or treading the corridors of 
the old Schloss, where the ancestral Guelphs had revelled, 
and where the ghost of Konigsmark might well be sup- 
posed to wander. The Act for restraining the King from 
going out of the kingdom was repealed in May, 1716. 
The Prince of Wales was to be appointed temporary ruler 
in the King's absence. This appointment was the only 
obstacle that George admitted to his journey. In the 
Hanover family, father had hated son, and son father 
with traditional persistence. George was animated by 
the sourest jealousy of his son. One reason, if there had 
been no other, for this animosity was that the young man 
was well known to have some sympathy for the sufferings 
of bis mother, the unhappy Sophia Dorothea, imprisoned 
in Ahlden, and he had at least once made an unsuccessful 
effort to see her. Since George came to England he per- 
sisted in regarding his eldest son as a rival for popular 
favor, and this feeling was naturally kept alive by the 
enemies of the House of Hanover. To this detested son 
George had now to intrust the care of his kingdom, or 
else abandon his visit to dear Herrenhausen. The strug- 
gle was severe, but patriotic affection triumphed over pa- 
ternal hatred. The Prince was named not indeed Regent, 
but Guardian of the Realm and Lieutenant, with as many 
restrictions upon his authority as the King was able or 
was allowed to impose, and on July 9th George set out for 
Hanover, accompanied by Secretary Stanhope. He was 
not long absent from England, however. On November 
14th he came back again. Loyalists issued prints of the 
monarch waited upon by angels, and accompanied by 
flattering verses addressed to the " Presedent of' y e Loyall 
Mug Houses." But the devotion of the mug-houses could 
not make George personally popular, or diminish the gen- 
eral dislike to his German ministers, his German mis- 
tresses, and the horde of hungry foreigners — the Hanove- 
rian rats, as Squire Western would have called them — . 
who came over with him to England, seeking for place 
and pension, or pension without place. 

The Thames was frozen over in the winter of this year, 
1716, and London made very merry over the event. The 
ice was covered with booths for the sale of all sorts of 
wares, and with small coffee-houses and chop-houses. 
Wrestling-rings were formed in one part ; in another, an 
ox was roasted whole. People played at push-pin, skated, 
or drove about on ice-boats brave with flags. Coaches 
moved slowly up and down the highway of barges and 
wherries, and hawkers cried their wares lustily in the new 
field that winter had offered them. All the banks of the 
river — and especially such places as the Temple Gardens 
— were crowded with curious throngs surveying the ani- 
mated and unusual scene. 

4 



During George's absence from England he and his 
ministers had made some new and important arrange- 
ments in the policy of Europe. From this time forth — 
indeed, from the reign of Queen Anne — England was 
destined — doomed, perhaps — to have a regular part in 
the politics of the Continent. Before that time she had 
often been drawn into them, or had plunged enterpris- 
ingly or recklessly into them, but from the date of the 
accession of the House of Hanover England was as close- 
ly and constantly mixed up in the political affairs of the 
Continent as Austria or France. In the opening years 
of George's reign, France, the Empire— Austria, that is to 
say, for the Holy Roman Empire had come to be merely 
Austria — and Spain were the important Continental 
Powers. Russia was only coming up ; the genius of 
Peter the Great was beginning to make her way for her. 
Italy was as yet only a geographical expression — a place 
divided among minor kings and princes, who in politics 
sometimes bowed to the Pope's authority, and sometimes 
evaded or disregarded it. The power of Turkey was 
broken, never to be made strong again ; the republic of 
Venice was already beginning to " sink like a sea-weed 
into whence she rose." The position of Spain was pecul- 
iar. Spain had for a long time been depressed and weak 
and disregarded. For many years it was thought that 
she was going down with Turkey and Venice — t-hat the 
star of her fate had declined forever. Suddenly, how- 
ever, she began to raise her head above the horizon again, 
and to threaten the peace of the Continent. The peace 
of the Continent could not now be threatened without 
menace to the peace of England, for George's Hanove- 
rian dominions were sure to be imperilled by European 
disturbance, and George w T ould take good care that Han- 
over did not suffer while England had armies to move 
and money to spend. The English Government found it 
necessary to look out for allies. 

France was under the rule of a remarkable man. Phil- 
ip, Duke of Orleans and Regent of the kingdom, ought 
to have been a statesman of the Byzantine Empire. He 
was steeped to the lips in profligacy ; he had no moral 
sense whatever, unless that which was supplied by the 
so-called code of honor. His intrigues, his carouses, his 
debaucheries, his hordes of mistresses, gave scandal even 
in that time of prodigal license. But he had a cool head, 
a daring spirit, and an intellect capable of accepting new 
and original ideas. He must be called a statesman ; and, 
despite the vulgarity of some of his vices, he has to be 
called a gentleman as well. He could be trusted; he 
would keep his word once given. Other statesmen could 
treat with him, and not fear that he would break a prom- 
ise or betray a confidence. How rare such qualities were 
at that day among the politicians of any country the 
readers of the annals of Queen Anne do not need to be 
told. The Regent's principal adviser at this time was a 
man quite as immoral, and also quite as able, as himself 
— the Abbe Dubois, afterwards Cardinal and Prime-min- 
ister. Dubois had a profound knowledge of foreign af- 
fairs, and he thoroughly understood the ways of men. 
He had fought his way from humble rank to a great 
position in Church and State. He had trained his every 
faculty — and all his faculties were well worth the train- 
ing — to the business of statecraft and of diplomatic in- 
trigue. It is somewhat curious to note that the three 
ablest politicians in Europe at that day were churchmen : 
Swift in England, Dubois in France, and Alberoni — of 
whom we shall presently have to speak — in Spain. The 
quick and unclouded intelligence of the Regent — un- 
clouded despite his days and nights of debauchery — saw 
that the cause of the Stuarts was gone. While that 
cause had hope he was willing to give it a chance, and 
he would naturally have welcomed its success ; but he 
had taken good care during its late and vain effort not 
to embroil himself in any quarrel, or even any misun- 
derstanding, with England on its account ; and now that 



42 



A HISTORY OF THE TOUR GEORGES. 



thai poor struggle was over for the time, he believed that 
it would he for his interest to come to an understand- 
ing with King < reorge. 

The idea of such an understanding originated with 
the Regent himself. There lias been some discussion 
among English historians as to the title of Townshend 
or of Stanhope to be considered its author. Whether 
Townshend or Stanhope first, accepted the suggestion 

does not seem a matte]' of lliueh consequence. Il is clear 

thai tin' overture was made by the Regent. While King 
George and his minister Stanhope were in Hanover, the 
Regent sent Dubois on various pretexts to places where 
lie might have an opportunity of coming to an under- 
standing with both. Dubois had lived in England, and 
had made the personal acquaintance of Stanhope there. 
What could be more natural than that the Regent, who 
was a lover of art, should ask Dubois to visit the Hague, 

for the purpose of buying some hooks and pictures, about 
the time that the English minister was known to be in 
the neighborhood? And how could old acquaintances 
like Stanhope and Dubois, thus brought into close prox- 
imity, fail to take advantage of the opportunity, and to 
have many a quiet, informal meeting? What, more nat- 
ural than that, Dubois should afterwards go to Hanover 
to visit his friend Stanhope there, and that, he should 
live in Stanhope's house? The account which the lively 
Lady Mary Worllcy Montagu skives of the manner in 
which Hanover was then crowded would of itself explain 
the necessity for Duhois availing himself of Stanhope's 
hospitality, and for Stanhope's oiler of it. The Portu- 
guese ambassador, Lady Mary says, thought himself very 
happy to he the temporary possessor of "two wretched 
parlors in an inn." Duhois and Stanhope had many 
talks, and the result was an arrangement which could be 
accepted by the King ami the Regent. 

The foreign policy of the WhigS had for its object the 
maintenance of peace on the European continent by a 
close observance of the conditions laid down in the Treaty 
of Utrecht. The settlement, made under that treaty was, 
however, very unsatisfactory to Spain. The new Spanish 
king, Philip of . Anjou, had formally renounced his own 
rights of succession to the throne of F ranee, ami had giv- 
en up the Italian provinces which formerly belonged to 
the Spanish Crown. Hut, as in most such instances at 
that time, an ambitious European sovereign had no soon- 
er accepted conditions which appeared to him in any wise 
unsatisfactory, than he went to work to endeavor to set 
them aside, or get out of them somehow. Philip's whole 
mind was turned to the object of getting back again all 
that he had given up. This would not have seemed an 
easy task, even to a man of the stamp of Charles the 
Fifth. It would almost appear that any attempt in such 
a direction must bring Europe in arms against Spain. 
The Regent Duke of Orleans stood next in succession 
to the French throne, in consequence of Philip's renunci- 
ation of his rights by virtue of the Treaty of Utrecht. 
The Italian provinces which had once been Spain's were 
now handed over to Austria, and Austria would of course 
be resolute in their defence. King Philip was not the 
man to confront the difficulties of a situation of this kind 
by his own unaided powers of mind. He was very far 
indeed from being a Charles the Fifth. He was not even 
a Philip the Second. But he had for his minister a man 
as richly endowed with statesmanship and courage as he 
himself was wanting in those qualities. Giulio Alberoni, 
an Italian born at l'iacen/.a, in 1664, was at one time ap- 
pointed agent of the Duke of Parma at the Court of 
Spain, and in this position acquired very soon the favor 
of Philip. Alberoni was of the most humble origin. His 
father was a gardener, and he himself a poor village 
priest. He rose, however, both in diplomacy and in the 
Church, having worked his way up to the favor of the 
Duke of Parma, to work still further on to the complete 
favor of Philip the Fifth. The first marked success in 



his upward career was made when he contrived to com- 
mend himself to the Due do Vendome, the greatest 

French commander of his day. The Duke of Parma 

hail occasion to deal with Vendome, and sent, the Bishop 
of Parma to confer with him. The Due de Vendome 
was a man who affected roughness and brutality of man- 
ners, and made it, his pride to set all rules of decency at 
defiance. Peter the Great, Potemkin, Suwarrow, would 
have seemed men of ultra-refinement when compared with 
him. His manner of receiving the bishop was such that 
the bishop quitted his presence abruptly and without 
saying a word, and returning to Parma, told his master 
that no consideration on earth should induce him ever to 
approach the brutal French soldier again. Alberoni was 
beginning to rise at. this time. He offered to undertake 
the mission, feeling sure that not even Vendome could 
disconcert him. lie was intrusted with the task of re- 
newing the negotiations, and he obtained admission to 
the presence of Vendome. Every reader remembers the 
story in the " Arabian Nights " of that brother of the talk- 
ative barber who threw himself into the spirit of the rich 
Barmecide's humor, and by outdoing him in the practical 
joke secured forever his favor and his friendship. Albe- 
roni acted on this principle at his first meeting with Ven- 
dome. He outbuffooned even Venddme's buffoonery. The 
story will not bear minute explanation, but Alberoni soon 
satisfied Vendome that he had to do with a man after his 
own heart, what Elizabethan writers would have called a 
" mad wag" indeed, and Vendome gave him his confidence. 
Alberoni was made prime-minister by Philip in 1715, 
and cardinal by the Court of Rome shortly after. The 
ambition of Alberoni was in the first instance to recover 
to Spain her lost Italian provinces, and to raise Spain once 
more to the commanding position she had held when 
Charles the Fifth abdicated the crown. Alberoni's pol- 
icy, indeed, was a mistake as regarded the strength and 
the prosperity of Spain. Spain's Italian and Flemish prov- 
inces were of no manner of advantage to her. They 
were sources of weakness, because they constantly laid 
Spain open to an attack from any enemy who had the ad- 
vantage of being able to choose his battle-ground for 
himself so long as Spain had outlying provinces scattered 
over the Continent. Indeed, it is made clear, from the 
testimony of many observers, thai Spain was rapidly re- 
covering her domestic prosperity from the moment when 
she lost those provinces, and when the continual strain to 
which they exposed her finances was stopped. At that 
epoch of Europe's political development, however, the idea 
had hardly occurred to any statesman that national great- 
ness could come about in any other way than by the an- 
nexing or the recovery of territory. Alberoni intrigued 
against the Regent, and was particularly anxious to injure 
the Emperor. He was well inclined to enter into nego- 
tiations, and even into an alliance, with England. He 
lent his help when first he took office to bring to a satis- 
factory conclusion some arrangements for a commercial 
treaty between England and Spain. This treaty gave 
back to British subjects whatever advantages in trade 
they had enjoyed under the Austrian kings of Spain, and 
contained what we should now call a most favored nation 
clause, providing that no British subjects should be ex- 
posed to higher duties than were paid by Spaniards. Al- 
beroni cautiously refrained from giving any encourage- 
ment to the Stuarts, and always professed to the British 
minister the strongest esteem and friendship for King 
George. Stanhope himself had known Alberoni formerly 
in Spain, and had from the first formed a very high opin- 
ion of his abilities. He now opened a correspondence 
with the cardinal, expressing a strong wish for a sincere 
and lasting friendship between England and Spain; and 
this correspondence was kept up for some time in so 
friendly and confidential a manner that very little was 
left for the regular accredited minister from Spain at tho 
Court of King George to do. 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



43 



Alberoni, however, was somewhat too vain and impa- 
tient. Be had brought over Sweden to his side, partly 
because lie found Charles the Twelfth in a bad humor on 
account of the cession to Hanover of certain Swedish ter- 
ritories by the King of Denmark, who had clutched them 
while the warlike Charles was away in Turkey. The ces- 
sion of these places brought Hanover to the sea, and 
Mas of importance thus to Hanover and to England alike. 
George the Elector was in his petty way an ambitious 
Hanoverian prince, however little interest he had in Eng- 
lish affairs. He had always been anxious to get posses- 
sion of (In- districts of Bremen and Verden, which had 
been handed over to Sweden at the Peace of Westphalia. 
Reckless enterprise had carried Charles the Twelfth — 
"Swedish Charles," with "a frame of adamant, a soul of 
fire," whom no dangers frighted, and no labors tired, the 
"unconquered lord of pleasure and of pain" — too far in 
the rush of his chivalrous madness. His vaulting ambi- 
tion had overleaped itself, and fallen on the other side ; 
and after his defeat at Pultowa, all his enemies, some of 
whom he had scared into inaction before, turned upon 
him as the nations of Europe turned upon Napoleon the 
First after Moscow. Charles had gone into Turkey and 
taken refuge there, and it seemed as if he had fallen nev- 
er to rise again. In his absence the King of Denmark 
seized Schleswig-Holstein, Bremen, and Verden. At the 
close of 1714 Charles suddenly roused bhnself from de- 
pression and appeared at the town of Stralsund, almost as 
much to the alarm of Europe as Napoleon had caused 
when he left Elba and landed on the southern shore of 
France. The King of Denmark shuddered at the pros- 
pect of a struggle with Charles, and in order to secure 
some part of his spoils he entered into a treaty with the 
Elector of Hanover, by virtue of which he handed over 
Bremen and Verden to George, on condition that George 
should pay him a handsome sum of money, and join him 
in resist ing Sweden. 

Nothing could be less justifiable, or indeed more nefa- 
rious, than these arrangements. They were discreditable 
to George the First, and they were disgraceful to the 
King of Denmark. Yet the general policy of that time 
seems to have approved of the whole transaction, and re- 
garded it merely as a good stroke of business for Hanover 
and for England. Alberoni, having secured the help of 
Sweden, got together great forces both by sea and by 
land, and prepared for a reconquest of the lost Italian 
provinces. He occupied Sardinia, and made an attempt 
on Sicily. But this was going a little too far and too 
fast. Alberoni frightened the great States of Europe 
into activity against him. England, France, and Holland 
formed a triple alliance, the basis of which was that the 
House of Hanover should be guaranteed in England, and 
the House of Orleans in France, should the young King, 
Louis the Fifteenth, die without issue. Not long after, 
the triple alliance was expanded into a quadruple alli- 
ance, the Emperor of Germany becoming one of its mem- 
bers. An English fleet appeared in the Straits of Mes- 
sina, and a sea-fight took place in which the Spaniards 
lost almost all their vessels. Alberoni tried to get up 
another fleet under the Duke of Ormond for the purpose 
of making a landing in Scotland, with a view to a great 
Jacobite rising. But the seas and skies seem always to 
have been fatal to Spanish projects against England, and 
the expedition under Ormond was as much of a failure as 
the far greater expedition under Alexander of Parma. 
The fleet was wrecked in the Bay of Biscay. The French 
were invading the northern provinces of Spain, and the 
King of Spain was compelled not only to get rid of Al- 
beroni, but to renounce once more any claim to the French 
throne, and to abandon his attempts on Sardinia and Sic- 
ily. Another danger was removed from England by the 
death of Charles the Twelfth. "A petty fortress and a 
dubious hand " brought about the end of him who had, 
" like the wind's blast, never-resting, homeless," stormed 



so long across war-convulsed Europe, and " left that name 
at which the world grew pale, to point a moral or adorn 
a tale." Charles the Twelfth had just entered into an alli- 
ance with Peter the Great for an enterprise to destroy the 
House of Hanover and restore the Stuarts, when the mem- 
orable bullet at the siege of Frederickshald, in Norway, 
brought his strange career to a close in December, 1718. 
A junction between such men as Charles the Twelfth and 
Peter the Great might indeed have had matter in it. 
Peter was probably the greatest sovereign born to a 
throne in modern Europe. An alliance between Peter's 
profound sagacity and indomitable perseverance, and 
Charles's unbounded courage and military skill, might 
have been ominous for any cause against which it was 
aimed. The good-fortune which from first to last seems 
on the whole to have attended the House of Hanover, and 
followed it even in spite of itself, was with it when the 
bullet from an unknown hand struck down Charles the 
Twelfth. 

These international arrangements have for us now very 
little real interest. They were entirely artificial and tem- 
porary. Nothing came of them that could long endure 
or make any real change in the relations of the European 
States. They had hardly anything to do with the inter- 
ests of the various peoples over whose heads and without 
whose knowledge or concern they were made. It was still 
firmly believed that two or three diplomatists, meeting in 
a half-clandestine way in a minister's closet or a lady's 
drawing-room, could come to agreements which would 
bind down nations and rule political movements. The 
first real upheaving of any genuine force, national or per- 
sonal, in European life tore through all their meshes in a 
moment. Frederick the Great, soon after, is to compel 
Europe to reconstruct her scheme of political arrange- 
ments ; later yet, the French Revolution is to clear the 
ground more thoroughly and violently still. The triple 
alliance, concocted by the Regent and Stanhope and Du- 
bois, had not the slightest permanent effect on the gen- 
eral condition of Europe. It was a clever and an original 
idea of the Regent to think of bringing England and 
France, these old hereditary enemies, into a permanent 
alliance, and it was right of Stanhope to enter into the 
spirit of the enterprise ; but the actual conditions of Eng- 
land and France did not allow of an abiding friendship. 
The national interest, as it was then understood, of the 
one State was in antagonism to the national interest of 
the other. Nor could France and England combined 
have kept down the growth of other European States" 
then rising into importance and beginning to cast their 
shadows far in front of them. It seems only amusing to 
us now to read of King George's directions to his minis- 
ter — "To crush the Czar immediately, to secure his ships, 
and even to seize his person." The courageous and dull 
old King had not the faintest perception of the part 
which cither the Czar or the Czar's country was destined 
to play in the history of Europe. At present we are all 
inclined, and with some reason, to think that French 
statesmen, as a rule, are wanting in a knowledge of for- 
eign politics — in an appreciation of the relative propor- 
tions of one force and another in the affairs of Europe 
outside France. But in the days of George the First 
French statesmen were much more accomplished in the 
knowledge of foreign politics than the statesmen of Eng- 
land. There was not, probably, in George's administra- 
tion any man who had anything like the knowledge of the 
affairs of foreign countries which was possessed by Du- 
bois. But it had not yet occurred to the mind of Dubois, 
or the Regent, or anybody else, that the relations of one 
State to another, or one people to another, are anything 
more than the arrangements which various sets of diplo- 
matic agents think fit to make among themselves and to 
consign to the formality of a treaty. 

The interest we have now in all these "understand- 
ings," engagements, and so-called alliances is personal 



44 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



ratber than national. So far as England is concerned, 
they led to a squabble and a split in George's administra- 
tion. It would hardly be worth while to go into a minute 
history of the quarrel between Townshend and Stanhope, 
Sunderland and Walpole. Sunderland, a man of great 
ability and ambition, had never been satisfied with the 
place he held in the King's administration, and the dis- 
putes which sprang up out of the negotiations for the 
triple alliance gave him an opportunity of exerting his 
influence against some of his colleagues. Fresh occasion 
for intrigue, jealous)', and anger was given by the desire 
of the King to remain during the winter in Hanover, and 
his fear, on the other hand, that his son — the Prince who 
was at the head of affairs in his absence — was forming a 
party against him, and was caballing with some of the 
members of the Government. Sunderland acted on the 
King's narrow and petty fears, lie distinctly accused 
Townshend and Walpole of a secret understanding with 
the Prince and the Duke of Argyll against the Sover- 
eign's interests. The result of al! this was that the King 
dismissed Lord Townshend, and that Walpole insisted 
on resigning office. The King, to do him justice, would 
gladly have kept Walpole in his service, but Walpole 
would not stay. It is clear that Walpole was glad of the 
opportunity of getting out of the ministry. He professed 
to be deeply touched by the earnestness of the King's 
remonstrances. He was moved, it is stated, to tears. At 
all events, he got very successfully through the ceremony 
of tear -shedding. But although he wept, he did not 
soften. His purpose remained fixed. He went out of 
office, and, to all intents and purposes, passed straight- 
way into opposition. Stanhope became First Lord of the 
Treasury ami Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

For a long time it must have been apparent to every 
one that Walpole was the coming minister. Walpole 
himself must have felt satisfied on the point; but he was 
probably well content to admit to himself that his time 
had not yet come. Walpole was not a great man. He 
wanted the moral qualities which are indispensable to 
greatness. He was almost as much wanting in them as 
Bolingbroke himself. But if his genius was far less brill- 
iant than that of Bolingbroke, he was amply furnished 
with patience and steadiness. He could wait. He did 
not devise half a dozen plans for one particular object, 
and fly from one to the other when the moment for ac- 
tion was approaching, and end by rejecting them all 
.when the moment for action had arrived. He made up 
his mind to a certain course, and he held to it; if its 
chance did not come to-day, it might come to-morrow. 
He had no belief in men's sincerity — or women's either. 
There seems reason to believe that the famous saying 
ascribed to him, about every man having his price, was 
not used by him in that unlimited sense ; that he only 
spoke of "these men" — of certain men — and said that 
every one of them had his price. But he always acted 
as if the description he gave of " these men " might safely 
be extended to all men. He had a coarse, licentious nat- 
ure. He enjoyed the company of loose women. He loved 
obscene talk ; not merely did he love it, but he indulged 
in and encouraged it for practical purposes of his own ; 
he thought it useful at men's dinner-parties, because it 
gave even the dullest man a subject on which he could 
find something to say. One could not call Walpole a 
patriot in the higher sense ; he wanted altogether that 
fine fibre in his nature, that exalted, half-poetic feeling, 
that faculty of imagination which quickens practical and 
prosaic objects with the spirit of the ideal, and which are 
needed to make a man a patriot in the noblest meaning 
of the word. But he loved his country in his own heavy, 
practical, matter-of-fact sort of way, and that was just 
the sort of way which at the time happened to be most 
useful to England. Let it be said, too, in justice to Wal- 
pole, that the most poetic and lyrical nature would have 
found little subject for enthusiasm in the England of Wal- 



pole's earlier political career. It was not exactly the age 
for a Philip Sidney or for a Milton. England's home 
and foreign policy had for years been singularly ignoble. 
At home it had been a conflict of mean intrigues ; abroad, 
a policy of selfish alliances and base compromises and sur- 
renders. The splendid military genius of Marlborough 
only shone as it did as if to throw into more cruel light 
the infamy of the intrigues and plots to which it was 
often sacrificed. No man could be enthusiastic about 
Queen Anne or George the First. The statesmen who 
professed the utmost ardor for the Stuart cause were 
ready to sell it at a moment's notice, to secure their own 
personal position; most of those who grovelled before 
King George were known to have been in treaty, up to 
the last, with his rival. We may excuse Walpole it', 
under such conditions, he took a prosaic view of the stale 
of things, and made his patriotism a very practical sort 
of service to his country. It was, as we have said, pre- 
cisely the sort of service England just then stood most in 
need of. Walpole applied himself to secure for his coun- 
try peace and retrenchment. He did not, indeed, main- 
tain a sacred principle of peace; he had no sacred prin- 
ciple about anything. We shall see more lately that he 
did not scruple, for party reasons, to lend himself to a 
wanton and useless war, well knowing it was wanton and 
useless ; but his general policy was one of peace, and so 
long as he had his own way there would have been no 
waste of England's resources on foreign battle-fields. lie 
despised Avar, and the trade of war, in his heart. To him 
war showed only in its vulgar, practical, ami repulsive 
features; the soldier was a man who got paid for the 
trade of killing. Walpole might be likened to a shrewd 
and sensible steward who is sincerely anxious to manage 
his master's estate with order and economy, and who, for 
that very reason, is willing to indulge his master's vires 
and to sanction his prodigalities to a certain extent, know- 
ing that if he attempts to draw the purse-strings too close- 
ly an open rupture will be the result, and then some stew- 
ard will come in who has no taste for saving, and who 
will let everything go to rack and ruin. He was the first 
of the long line of English ministers who professed to 
regard economy as one of the great objects of statesman- 
ship. He established securely the principle that to make 
the two ends meet was one of the first duties of patriot- 
ism. He founded, if we may use such an expression, the 
dynasty of statesmen to which Pitt and Peel and Glad- 
stone belong. The change in our constitutional ways 
which set up that new dynasty was of infinitely greater 
importance to England than the change which settled the 
Bruuswicks in the place of the Stuarts. 

CHAPTER X. 

HOME AFFAIRS. 

Meanwhile the public seemed to have forgoiien all 
about Lord Oxford. " Harley, the nation's great sup- 
port," as Swift had called him, had been nearly two years 
in the Tower, and the nation did not seem to miss its 
great support, or to care anything about him. In May, 
1717, Lord Oxford sent a petition to the House of Lords, 
complaining of the hardship and injustice of this unac- 
countable delay in his impeachment, and the House of 
Lords began at last to put on an appearance of activity. 
The Commons, too, revived and enlarged their secret 
committee, of which it will be remembered that Walpole 
was the chairman. Times, however, had changed. Wal- 
pole was not in the administration, and felt no anxiel i 
assist the ministry in any way. He purposely absent d 
himself from the sittings, and a new chairman had to I 
chosen. Probably Walpole had always known well enough 
that there was not evidence to sustain a charge of high- 
treason against his former rival; perhaps, now that the 
rival was down in the dust, never to rise again, he did 
not care to press for his punishment. At all event. 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



45 



made it clear that he felt no interest in the impeachment 
of Lord Oxford. The friends of the ruined minister had 
recourse to an ingenious artifice. June 24, 1717, had been 
appointed for the opening of the proceedings. Westmin- 
ster Hall, lately the scene of the impeachment of Sinners, 
and soon to be the scene of the impeachment of Warren 
Hastings, was of course the place where Oxford had to 
come forward and meet his accusers. The King, the 
Prince and the Princess of Wales were seated in the 
Hall; most of the foreign ambassadors and ministera 
were spectators. The imposing formalities and artificial 
terrors of such a ceremonial were kept up. Lord Oxford 
had been brought from the Tower to Westminster by 
water. He was now led bareheaded up to the bar by the 
Deputy Lieutenant of the Tower, having the axe borne 
before him, its edge turned away from him as yet, sym- 
bolic of the doom that might await the prisoner, but to 
which he had not yet been declared responsible. When 
the reading of the articles of impeachment and other 
opening passages of the trial had been gone through, 
Lord liareourt, Oxford's friend, interposed, and announced 
that he had a motion to make. In order to hear his mo- 
tion, the Peers had to withdraw to their own House. 
There Lord liareourt moved that the House should dis- 
pose of the two articles of impeachment for high-treason 
before going into any of the evidence to support the 
charges for high crimes and misdemeanors. The argu- 
ment for this course of proceeding was plausible. If Ox- 
ford were convicted of high -treason he would have to 
forfeit his life ; and in such case, where would be the 
use of convicting him of a minor offence? The plan on 
which the Commons proposed to act, that of taking all 
the evidence in order of time, no matter to which charge 
it had reference, before coming to any conclusion, might, 
as Lord liareourt put it, " draw the trial into prodigious 
length," and absolutely to no purpose. Should the ac- 
cused be found guilty of high - treason he must suffer 
death, and there would be an end of the whole business. 
Should he be acquitted of the graver charge, he might 
then be impeached on the lighter accusation ; and what 
harm would have been done or time lost ? The motion 
was carried by a majority of eighty-eight to fifty-six. 

Now it is hardly possible to suppose that the Peers 
who voted in the majority did not know very well that 
the Commons would not, and could not, submit to have 
their mode of conducting an impeachment, which it was 
their business to manage, thus altered at the sudden dic- 
tation of the other chamber. The House of Commons 
was growing in importance every day; the House of 
Lords was proportionately losing its influence. The Com- 
mons determined that they would conduct the impeach- 
ment in their own way or not at all. Doubtless some of 
them, most of them, were glad to be well out of the wdiole 
affair. July 1st was fixed for the renewal of the proceed- 
ings. Some fruitless conferences between Lords and 
Commons wasted two days, and on the evening of July 3d 
the Lords sat in Westminster Hall, and invited by proc- 
lamation the accusers of Oxford to appear. No man- 
ager came forward to conduct the impeachment on the 
part of the Commons. The Peers sat for a quarter of an 
hour, as if waiting for a prosecutor, well knowing that 
none was coming. A solemn farce was played. The 
Peers went back to their chamber, and there a motion 
was made acquitting " Robert, Earl of Oxford and Earl 
Mortimer," on the ground that no charge had been main- 
tained against him. A crowd without hailed the adop- 
tion of the motion with cheers. Oxford was released 
from the Tower, and nothing more was ever heard of his 
impeachment. The Duke of Marlborough was furious 
with rage at Oxford's escape, and the duchess is de- 
scribed as "almost distracted that she could not obtain 
her revenge." Magnanimity was not a characteristic 
virtue of the early days of the Georges. 

This was what has sometimes been called the honora- 



ble acquittal of Oxford. An English judge once spoke 
• humorously of a prisoner having been "honorably ac- 
quitted on a flaw in the indictment." Harley's was like 
this: it was not an acquittal, and it was not honorable 
to the man impeached, the House that forebore to press 
the impeachment, or the House that contrived his escape 
from trial. Oxford had been committed to the Tower 
and impeached for reasons that had little to do with his 
guilt or innocence, or with true public policy ; he was re- 
leased from prison and relieved from further proceedings 
in just the same way. There was not evidence against 
him on which he could be convicted of high-treason, and 
this was well known to his enemies when they first con- 
signed him to the Tower. But there could not be the 
slightest moral doubt on the mind of any man that Ox- 
ford had intrigued with the Stuarts, and had endeavored 
to procure their restoration, and that he had done this 
even since his committal to the Tower. His guilt, what- 
ever it was, bad-been increased by him, and not dimin- 
ished, since the beginning of the proceedings taken 
against him. But he had only done what most other 
statesmen of that day had been doing, or would have 
done if they had seen advantage in it. He was not more 
guilty than some of his bitterest opponents, the Duke of 
Marlborough among others. All but the very bitterest 
opponents were glad to be done with the whole business. 
It must have come to a more or less farcical end sooner 
or later, and sensible men were of opinion that the sooner 
the better. Of Harley, "Earl of Oxford and Earl Mor- 
timer," as his titles ran, we shall not hear any more ; we 
have already foreshadowed the remainder of "his life and 
his death. This short account of his sham impeachment 
is introduced here merely as a part of the historic con- 
tinuity of the narrative. History has few characters less 
interesting than that of Oxford. He held a position of 
greatness without being great; he fell, and even his fall 
could not invest him with tragic dignity. 

On December 13, 1718, Lord Stanhope, who had been 
raised to the peerage, first as Viscount and then as Earl 
Stanhope, introduced into the House of Lords a measure 
ingeniously entitled " A Bill for Strengthening the Prot- 
estant Interest in these Kingdoms." The title of the Bill 
was strictly appropriate according to our present ideas, 
and according to the ideas of enlightened men in Stan- 
hope's days also ; but it must at first have misled some of 
Stanhope's audience. Most Churchmen are now ready to 
admit that the interests of the Church of England are 
strengthened by every measure which tends to secure re- 
ligious equality ; but most Churchmen were not quite so 
sure of this in the reign of George the First. The Bill 
brought in by Stanhope was really a measure intended to 
relieve Dissenters from some of the penalties and disabil- 
ities imposed on them in the reign of Queen Anne. 

The second reading of the Bill was the occasion of a 
long and animated debate. Several noble lords appealed 
to the opinion of the bishops, and the bishops spoke in 
answer to the appeal. The Archbishop of Canterbury, 
the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, the Bish- 
op of Bristol, the Bishop of Rochester ( Atterbury ), the 
Bishop of Chester, and other prelates, spoke against the 
Bill. The Bishop of Bangor, the Bishop of Gloucester, 
the Bishop of Lincoln, the Bishop of Norwich, and the 
Bishop of Peterborough spoke in its favor. The Bishop 
of Peterborough's was a strenuous and an eloquent argu- 
ment in favor of the principle of the Bill. " The words 
'Church' and 'Church's danger,'" said the Bishop of Pe- 
terborough, " had often been made use of to carry on 
sinister designs ; and then these words made a mighty 
noise in the mouths of silly women and children;" but in 
his opinion the Church, which he defined to be a script- 
ural institution upon a legal establishment, was founded 
upon a rock, and "could not be in danger as long as we 
enjoyed the light of the Gospel and our excellent consti- 
tution." The argument would have been perfect if the 



4G 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



eloquent bishop had only left out the proviso about " our 
excellent constitution ;" for the opponents of the meas- 
ure were contending, as was but natural, that the Bill, if 
passed into law, would not leave to the Church the consti- 
tutional protection which it had previously enjoyed. 

The Bill passed the House of Lords on December 23d, 
and was sent down to the Commons next day. It was 
read there a first time at once, was read a second time 
after a debate of some nine hours, and was passed without 
amendment by a majority of 221 against 170 on January 
10, 1719. Tli'i' test majority, however, by which the Bill 
had been decisively carried, on the motion to go into 
committee, was but small — 243 against 202 — and this 
majority was mainly due to the vote of the Scottish mem- 
bers. Stanhope, it is well known, would have made the 
measure more liberal than it was, and was dissuaded from 
this intention by Sunderland, who insisted that if it were 
too liberal it would not pass the House of Commons. 
The result seems to prove that Sunderland was right. 
Walpole spoke against the Bill, limited as its concessions 
were. It would be interesting to know what sort of argu- 
ment a man of Walpole's principles could have offered 
against a measure embodying the very spirit and sense of 
Whig policy. Unfortunately we have no means of know- 
ing. The galleries of the House of Commons were rigidly 
closed against strangers on the day of the debate, and all 
we are allowed to hear concerning Walpole's part in the 
discussion is that " Mr. Robert Walpole made a warm 
speech, chiefly levelled against a great man in the present 
administration." There is something characteristic of 
Walpole in this. He was never very particular about 
principle, or even about seeming consistency ; but still, 
when opposing a measure which he might have been ex- 
pected to support, he would have probably found it more 
expedient, as well as more agreeable, to confine himself 
chiefly to the task of attacking some "great man in the 
present administration." 

It ought to be said of Stanhope that he was distinctly 
in advance of his age as regarded the recognition of the 
principle of religious equality. He was not only anxious 
to put the Protestant Dissenters as much as possible on a 
level with Churchmen in all the privileges of citizenship, 
but he was even strongly in favor of mitigating the se- 
verity of the laws against the Roman Catholics. In his 
" History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the 
Peace of Versailles," Lord Stanhope, the descendant of 
the minister whose career and character have done so 
much honor to a name and a family, claims for him the 
credit of having put on paper a scheme " not undeserv- 
ing of attention as the earliest germ of Roman Catholic 
emancipation." Stanhope's life was too soon and too sud- 
denly cut short to allow him to push forward his scheme 
to anything like a practical position, and it is not probable 
that he could in any case have done much with it at such 
a time. Still, though fate cut short the life, it ought not 
to cut short the praise. 

The Peerage Bill raised a question of some constitu- 
tional importance. The principal object of this measure, 
which was introduced on February 28, 1719, in the House 
of Lords, by the Duke of Somerset, and was believed to 
have Lord Sunderland for its actual author, was to limit 
the prerogative of the Crown in the creation of English 
peerages to a number not exceeding six, in addition to 
those already existing. According to the provisions of 
the Bill, the Crown might still create new Peers on 
the extinction of old titles for want of male heirs ; but 
with this exception the power of adding new peerages 
would be limited to the number of six. It was also pro- 
posed that, instead of the sixteen elective Peers from 
Scotland, twenty-five hereditary Peers should be created. 
This part of the Bill was that which at the time gave rise 
to most of the debate, in the House of Lords at least ; 
but the really important constitutional question was that 
which involved the limitation of the privilege of the Sov- 



ereign. The Sovereign himself sent a special message to 
the House of Lords, informing them that " he has so much 
at heart the settling the Peerage of the whole kingdom 
upon such a foundation as may secure the freedom and 
constitution of Parliament in all future ages, that he is 
willing that his prerogative stand not in the way of so 
great and necessary a work." The ostensible motive for 
the proposed legislation was to get rid of difficulties 
caused by the over-increase of the numbers of the peer- 
age since the union of England and Scotland ; the real 
object was to guard against such a coup-cVetat as that ac- 
complished in Anne's later days by the creation of the 
twelve Peers, of whom Mrs. Masham's husband was one. 
Nothing could be more generous and liberal, it might 
have been thought, than the expressed willingness of the 
King to surrender a part of his prerogative. This very 
readiness, however, expressed as it was by anticipation, 
and before the measure had yet made any progress, set 
a great many persons in and out of Parliament thinking. 
A vehement dispute soon sprang up, in which the pam- 
phleteer, as usual, bore an important part. Addison, in 
one of his latest political and literary efforts, defended 
the proposed change. He described his pamphlet as the 
work of an "Old Whig." It was written as a reply to a 
pamphlet by Steele condemning the Bill, and signed " A 
Plebeian." Reply, retort, and rejoinder followed in more 
and more heated and personal style. The excitement 
created caused the measure to be dropped for the session, 
but it was brought in again in the session following, and 
it passed through all its stages in the Lords without trou- 
ble and with much rapidity. 

When it came down to the House of Commons, how- 
ever, a very different fate awaited it. Walpole assailed 
it with powerful eloquence and with unanswerable argu- 
ment. The true nature of the scheme now came out. It 
would have simply rendered the representative chamber 
powerless against a majority of the chamber which did 
not represent. This will be readily apparent to any one 
who considers the subject for a moment by the light of 
our more modern experience. A majority of the House 
of Commons, representing, it may be, a vast majority of 
the people, agree to a certain measure. It goes up to 
the House of Lords, and is rejected there. What means 
in the end have the Commons, who represent the nation, 
of giving effect to the wishes of the nation ? They have 
none but the privilege of the Crown to create, under the 
advice of ministers, a sufficient number of new Peers to 
outvote the opponents of the measure. No alternative 
but revolution and civil war would be left if this were 
taken away. It is true that the power might be again 
abused by the Sovereign, as it was abused in Anne's days 
on the advice of the Tories ; but we know that, as a mat- 
ter of fact, it is hardly ever abused — hardly ever even used. 
Why is it hardly ever used ? For the good reason that 
all men know it is existing, and can be used should the 
need arise. Even were it to be misused, the misuse would 
happen under responsible ministers, who could be chal- 
lenged to answer for it, and who would have to make 
good their defence. But if the House of Lords were 
made supreme over the House of Commons in every in- 
stance, by abolishing the unlimited prerogative which 
alone keeps it in check, who could then be held respon- 
sible for abuse— and before whom ? Who could call the 
House of Lords to account ? Before what tribunal could 
it be summoned to answer ? The Peers are now indepen- 
dent of the people, and would then be also independent 
of the Crown. There is hardly a great political reform 
known to modern England which, if the Peerage Bill had 
become law, would not have been absolutely rejected or 
else carried by a popular revolution. 

Walpole attacked the Bill on every side. Such legis- 
lation, he insisted, "would in time bring back the Com- 
mons into the state of servile dependency they were in 
when they wore the badges of the Lords." It would, 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



47 



he contended, take away "one of the most powerful in- 
centives to virtue, . . . since there would be no coming 
to honor but through the winding-sheet of an old de- 
crepit lord and the grave of an extinct noble family." 
Walpole knew well his public and his time. He dwelt 
most strongly on this last consideration — that the Bill 
if passed into law would shut the gates of the Peerage 
against deserving Commoners. He asked indignantly 
how the House of Lords could expect the Commons to 
give their concurrence to a measure "by which they and 
their posterities are to be excluded from the Peerage." 
The commoner who, after this way of putting the mat- 
ter, assented to the Bill, must either have been an unam- 
bitious bachelor, or have been blessed in a singularly 
unambitious wife. Steele, who, as we have seen, had 
fought gallantly against the Bill with his pen, now made 
a very effective speech against it. He showed that the 
measure would alter the whole constitutional position of 
the House of Lords, whether as a legislative chamber or 
a court of appeal. "The restraint of the Peers to a 
certain number will make the most powerful of them 
have all the rest under their direction, . . . and judges 
so made by the blind order of birth will be capable of 
no other way of decision." The prerogative, as Steele 
put it very clearly, " can do no hurt when ministers do 
their duty ; but a settled number of Peers may abuse 
their power when no man is answerable for them, or can 
call them to account for their encroachments." The Bill 
was rejected by a majority of 269 votes against 177. 

In March, 1720, was passed an Act with a pompous 
and even portentous title : it was called " An Act for 
the better securing the Dependency of the Kingdom of 
Ireland upon the Crown of Great Britain." The pre- 
amble recited that " attempts have been lately made to 
shake off the subjection of Ireland unto and dependence 
upon the Imperial Crown of this realm, which will be 
of dangerous consequence to Great Britain and Ireland." 
The reader would naturally assume that some fresh de- 
signs of the Stuarts had been discovered, having for their 
theatre the Catholic provinces of Ireland. Was James 
Stuart about to land at Kinsale ? Had Alberoni got 
hold of the Irish Catholics? Was Atterbury plotting 
with Swift for an armed insurrection in Munster and 
Connaught ? No ; nothing of the kind was expected. 
The preamble of the alarming Act went on to set forth 
that the House of Lords in Ireland had lately, " against 
law, assumed to themselves a power and jurisdiction to 
examine, correct, and amend the judgments and decrees 
of the courts of justice in the kingdom of Ireland ;" and 
'this alleged trespass of the Irish House of Lords was the 
whole cause of the new measure. The Act declared 
that the Irish House of Lords had no jurisdiction "to 
judge of, affirm, or reverse any judgment, sentence, or 
decree given or made in any court within the said king- 
dom." This was an enactment of the most serious mo- 
ment in a constitutional sense. It made the Parliament 
of Ireland subordinate to the Parliament of England ; 
it reduced the Irish House of Lords from a position in 
Ireland equal to that of the House of Lords in England, 
down to the level of a mere provincial assembly. The 
occasion of the passing of this Act was the decision 
given by the Irish House of Lords in the celebrated cause 
of Sherlock against Annesley. It is not necessary for us 
to go into the story of the case at any length. It was 
a question of disputed property. The defendant had ob- 
tained a decree in the Irish Court of Exchequer, which 
decree was reversed on an appeal to the Irish House of 
Lords. The defendant appealed to the Euglish House of 
Lords, who confirmed the judgment of the Irish Court 
of Exchequer, and ordered him to be put in possession 
of the disputed property. The Irish House of Lords 
stood by their authority, and actually ordered the Irish 
Barons of Exchequer to be taken into custody by Black 
Rod for having offended against the privileges of the 



Peers and the rights and liberties of Ireland. The Act 
was passed to settle the question and reduce the Irish 
House of Lords to submission and subordinate rank. It 
was settled merely, of course, by the strength of a major- 
ity in the English Parliament. The Duke of Leeds re- 
corded a sensible and a manly protest against the vote 
of the majority of his brother Peers. One or two of 
the reasons he gives for his protest are worth reading 
even now. The eleventh reason is, " Because it is the 
glory of the English laws and the blessing attending 
Englishmen, that they have justice administered at their 
doors, and not to be drawn, as formerly, to Rome by ap- 
peals ;" "and by this order the people of Ireland must 
be drawn from Ireland hither whensoever they receive 
any injustice from the Chancery there, by which means 
poor men must be trampled on, as not being able to come 
over to seek for justice." The thirteenth reason is still 
more concise : " Because this taking away the jurisdic- 
tion of the Lords' House in Ireland may be a means to 
disquiet the Lords there and disappoint the King's af- 
fairs." 

The protest, it need hardly be said, received little or 
no attention. More than sixty years after, when England 
was perplexed in foreign and colonial troubles, the spir- 
it of the protest walked abroad and animated Grattan 
and the Irish Volunteers. But in 1720 the Parliament at 
Westminster was free to do as it pleased with the Parlia- 
ment in Dublin. To the vast majority of the Irish peo- 
ple it might have been a matter of absolute indifference 
which Parliament reigned supreme ; they had as little 
to expect from Dublin as from Westminster. The Irish 
Parliament was quite as ready to promote legislation for 
the further persecution of Catholics as any English Par- 
liament could be. The Parliament in Dublin was merely 
an assembly of English and Protestant colonists. Yet it 
is worthy of remark that, then and after, the sympathies 
of the people, when they had any means of showing them, 
went with the Irish Parliament simply because of .the 
name it bore. It was, at all events, the so-called Parlia- 
ment of Ireland ; it represented, at least in name, the au- 
thority of the Irish people. So long as it existed there 
was some recognition of the fact that Ireland was some- 
thing more than a merely conquered country, held by the 
title of the sword, and governed by arbitrary proclama- 
tion, secret warrant, and drum-head court-martial. 

Death had been busy among eminent men for some few 
years. The Duke of Shrewsbury, the " king of hearts," 
the statesman whose appointment as Lord Treasurer se- 
cured the throne of (Treat Britain for the Hanoverian 
family, died on February 18, 1717. William Penn, the 
founder of the great American State of Pennyslvania, 
closed his long active and fruitful life in 1718. We have 
here only to record his death ; the history of his deeds 
belongs to an earlier time. Controversy has now quite 
ceased to busy itself about his noble character, and his 
life of splendid unostentatious beneficence. His name, 
which without his consent and against his wishes was 
made part of the name of the State which he founded, 
will be remembered in connection with its history while 
the Delaware and the Schuylkill flow. Of his famous 
treaty with the Indians nothing, perhaps, was ever better 
said than the comment of Voltaire, that it was the only 
league between savages and white men which was never 
sworn to and never broken. Addison died, still compar- 
atively young, on June 17, 1719. He had reached the 
highest point of his political career but a short time be- 
fore, when, on one of the changes of office between Stan- 
hope and Sunderland, he became one of the principal 
secretaries of State. His health, however, was breaking 
down, and he never had indeed the slightest gift or taste 
for political life. "Pity," said Mrs. Manley, the author- 
ess of "The New Atlantis," speaking of Addison, "that 
politics and sordid interest should have carried him out 
of the road of Helicon and snatched him from the em- 



48 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



braces of the Muses." But it seems quite unjust to as- 
cribe Addison's divergence into political ways to any sor- 
did interest. He bad political friends who loved him, 
and he went with them into politics as he might have 
travelled in company with them, and for the sake of their 
company, although caring nothing for travel himself. 
No man was better aware of his incapacity for the real 
business of public life. Addison had himself pointed out 
all the objections to his political advancement before that 
advancement was pressed upon him. He was not a states- 
man; he was not an administrator; he could not do any 
genuine service as head of a department; he was not even 
a good clerk ; he was a wretched speaker ; he was con- 
sumed by a morbid shyness, almost as oppressive as that 
of the poet Cowper in a later day, or of Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne, the American novelist, later still. His whole pub- 
lic career was at best but a harmless mistake. It has 
done no harm to his literary fame. The world has almost 
forgotten it. Even lovers of Addison might have to be 
reminded now that the creator of Sir Roger de Coverley 
was once a diplomatic agent and a secretary of State, 
and a member of the House of Commons. Some of the 
essays which Addison contributed to the Spectator are like 
enough to outlive the system of government by party, and 
perhaps even (he whole system of representative gov- 
ernment. Sir Roger de Coverley will not be forgotten 
until men forget Parson Adams and Robinson Crusoe 
and Gil Bias, and for that matter, Sir John Falstaff and 
Don Quixote. 

For some time things were looking well at home and 
abroad. The policy of the Government appeared to have 
been completely successful on the Continent. The con- 
federations that had been threatening England were dis- 
solved or broken up; the Jacobite conspiracies seemed to 
have been made hopeless and powerless. The friendship 
established between England and the Regent of France 
had to all seeming robbed the Stuarts of their last chance. 
James the Chevalier had no longer a home on French 
soil. Paris could not any more be the head-quarters of 
his' organization and the scene of his mock Court. The 
Regent had kept his promises to the English Government. 
It was well known that, so far from encouraging or per- 
mitting the designs of the exiled family against England, 
he would do all in his power to frustrate them; as, indeed, 
he had an opportunity of doing not long after. Never 
before, perhaps never since, was there so cordial an un- 
derstanding between England and France. Never could 
there have been a time when such an understanding was 
of greater importance to England. 

At home the prospect seemed equally bright. Walpole 
had contrived to ingratiate himself more and more with 
the Prince of Wales, and had become his confidential ad- 
viser. Acting on his counsel, the Prince made his sub- 
mission to the King ; and acting on Stanhope's counsel, 
the King accepted it. The Sovereign and his heir had 
a meeting and were reconciled ; for the time, at least. 
Walpole consented to join the administration, content for 
the present to fill the humble place of paymaster to the 
forces, without a seat in the Cabinet. He returned, in 
fact, to the ministerial position which he had first occu- 
pied, and from which he had been promoted, and must 
have seemed to himself somewhat in the position of a 
boy who, after having got high in his class, has got down 
very low again, and is well content to mount up a step or 
two from the humblest position. Walpole knew what he 
was doing, and must have been quite satisfied in his own 
mind that he was not, likely to remain very long paymas- 
ter to the forces, although he could not, by any possibil- 
ity, have anticipated the strange succession of events by 
which he was destined soon to be left without a rival. 
For the present he was in the administration, but he took 
little part in its actual work. He did not even appear to 
have any real concern in it. He spent as much of his 
time as he could at Houghton, his pleasant country-seat 



in Norfolk. Townshend, too, had been induced to join 
the administration. To him was assigned the position of 
president of the council. 

Thus there appeared to be a truce to quarrels, and to 
enmities abroad and at home. There was no dispute with 
any of the great Continental powers ; there was no dread 
of the Stuarts. Ministerial rivalries had been reduced to 
concordance and quiet ; the traditional quarrel between 
the Sovereign and the heir-apparent had been composed. 
It might have been thought that a time of peace and 
national prosperity had been assured. In the history of 
nations, however, we commonly find that nothing more 
certainly bodes unsettlement than a general conviction 
that everything is settled forever. 

CHAPTER XL 

" THE EARTH HATH BUBBLES." 

One of the comedies of Ben Jonson gives some vivid 
and humorous illustrations of the mania for projects, 
speculations, patents, and monopolies that at his time had 
taken possession of the minds of Englishmen. There is 
an enterprising person who declares that he can coin 
money out of cobwebs, raise wool upon egg-shells, and 
make grass grow out of marrow-bones. He has a project 
"for the recovery of drowned land," a scheme for a new 
patent for the dressing of dog-skins for gloves, a plan 
for the bottling of ale, a device for making wine out of 
blackberries, and various other schemes cut and dry for 
what would now be called floating companies to make 
money. The civilized world is visited with this epidemic 
of project and speculation from time to time. In the 
reign of George the First such a mania attacked England 
much more fiercely than it had done even in the days of 
lien Jonson. It came to us this time from France. The 
close of a great war is always a tempting and a favorable 
time for such enterprises. Finances are out of order ; a 
season of spurious commercial activity has come to an 
end ; new resources are to be sought for somehow ; and 
man must change to be other than he is when he wholly 
ceases to believe in financial miracle-working. There is 
an air of plausibility about most of the new projects ; 
and, indeed, like the scheme told of in Ben Jonson for 
the recovery of drowned lands, the enterprise is usually 
something within human power to accomplish, if only 
human skill could make it pay. The exchequer of France 
had been brought into a condition of something very like 
bankruptcy by the long and wasting war ; and a project- 
or was found who promised to supply tbe deficiency as 
boldly and as liberally as Mephistopheles does in the 
second part of "Faust." John Law, a Scotchman, and 
unquestionably a man of great ability and financial skill, 
had settled in France in consequence of having fought a 
duel and killed his man in his own country. Law set up 
a company which was to have a monopoly of the trade 
of the w T hole Mississippi region in North America, and 
on condition of the monopoly was to pay off the national 
debt of France. A scheme of the kind within due lim- 
itations would have been reasonable enough, so far as the 
working of the Mississippi region was concerned ; but 
Law went on extending and extending the scope of its 
supposed operations, until it might almost as well have 
attempted to fold in the orb of the earth. The shares 
in his company went up with a sudden bound. He had 
the patronage of the Regent and of all the Court circle. 
Gambling in shares became the fashion, the passion of 
Paris, and, indeed, of all France. Shares bought one day 
were sold at an immense advance the next, or even the 
same day. Men and women, nearly bankrupt in purse 
before, suddenly found themselves in possession of large 
sums of money, for which they had to all appearance 
run no risk and made no sacrifice whatever. Princes and 
tradesmen, duchesses and seamstresses and harlots, clam- 
ored, intrigued, and battled for shares. The offices in 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



49 



the Rue Quincampoix, a street then inhabited by bank- 
ers, stock - brokers, and exchange agents, were besieged 
all day long with crowds of eager competitors for shares. 
The street was choked with tine equipages, until it was 
found absolutely necessary to close it against all horses 
and carriages. All the rank and fashion of Paris flung 
itself into this game of speculation. Everyone has heard 
the story of the hunchback who made a little fortune by 
the letting of his hump as a desk on which impatient 
speculators might scribble their applications for shares. 
A French novelist, M. Paid Feval, has made good use of 
this story, and London still remembers to what a brilliant 
dramatic account it was turned by Mr. Fechtcr. Law 
was the most powerful and the most courted man of his 
day. In his youth he had been a gallant and a free liver, 
a man of dress and fashion and intrigue, who delighted 
in scandalous entanglements with women. The fashion 
and beauty of Paris was for the hour at his feet. Think 
of a brilliant gallant who could make one rich in a mo- 
ment ! The mother of the Regent described in a coarse 
and pungent sentence the sort of homage which Parisian 
ladies would have been willing to pay to Law if he had 
so desired. St. Simon, the mere litt'&raU ur and diploma- 
tist, kepi his head almost alone, and was not to be daz- 
zled. Since the fable of Midas, he said, he had not heard 
of any one having the power to turn all he touched into 
gold, and he did not believe that virtue was given to 
M. Law. There is no doubt that Law was a man of great 
ability as a financier, and that his scheme in the begin- 
ning had promise in it. It was, as Burke has said of the 
scheme and its author, the public enthusiasm, and not 
Law himself, which chose to build on the base of his 
scheme a structure which it could not bear. It does not 
seem by any means certain that a project quite as wild 
might not be launched in London or Paris at the present 
i lav, and find almost as great a temporary success, and 
blaze, like Law's, the comet of a season. While the Sea- 
son lasted the comet blazed with a light that filled the 
social sky. 

Law was for the time the most powerful man in France. 
A momentary whisper that he was out of health sent the 
funds down, and eclipsed the gayety of nations. He was 
admitted into the Regent's privy council, and made Con- 
troller-general of the finances of France. The result was 
inevitable; there was as yet nothing behind the promises 
and the shares of the Mississippi Company. If finance 
could have gone on forever promise - crammed, things 
would have been all right. But you cannot feed capons 
so, as Hamlet tells us ; and you cannot long feed share- 
holders so. Law's scheme suddenly collapsed one day, 
and brought ruin on hundreds of thousands in France. 
While, however, it was still afloat in air, its gaudy colors 
dazzled the eyes of the South Sea Company in England. 

At the north-west end of Threadneedle Street, within 
view of the remains of Richard the Third's Palace of 
Crosby, stands a solid red - brick building, substantial, 
respectable, business- like, dignified with the dignity of 
some century and a half of existence. Time has softened 
and deepened its ruddy hue to a mellow, rich tone, con- 
trasting pleasantly with the white copings and facings of 
its windows, and suggesting agreeably something of the 
smooth brown cloth and neat white linen of a well-to-do 
city gentleman of the last century. Yet that solemn, 
massive, prosperous-looking building is the enduring mon- 
ument of one of the most gigantic shams on record — a 
sham and swindle that was the prolific parent of a whole 
brood of shams and swindles ; for that building, with 
honesty and credit and mercantile honor written in its 
every line and angle, is all that remains of the South Sea 
House. It is a melancholy place — the Hall of the Kings 
at Karnak is hardly more melancholy or more ghost- 
haunted. Not that the house has now that "desolation 
something like Balclutha's" which Charles Lamb attrib- 
uted to it more than half a century ago. The place has 



changed greatly since Elia the Italian and Elia the Eng- 
lishman were fellow-clerks at the South Sea House. Those 
dusty maps of .Mexico, "dim as dreams," have long been 
taken away. The company itself, having outlived alike 
its fame and its infamy, lingering inappropriately like 
some guest that " hath outstayed his welcome time," was 
wound up at last within the memory of living men. The 
stately gate-way no longer opens upon the " grave court, 
with cloisters and pillars," where South Sea stock so often 
changed hands. The cloisters and pillars have gone ; the 
court has been converted into a hall of a sort of exchange, 
where merchants daily meet. The days of the desolation 
of the South Sea House are as much a thing of its past as 
its earlier splendor. Its corridors are now crowded with 
offices occupied by merchants of every nationality, from 
Scotland to Greece, and by companies connected with 
every portion of the globe. Only at night, on Saturday 
afternoons, and during the still peace of a City Sabbath, 
do the noise of men and the stir of business cease in the 
South Sea House. Yet, nevertheless, when one thinks of 
all that has happened there, of the dreams and hopes and 
miseries of which it was the begetter, it remains one of 
the most melancholy temples to folly that man has yet 
erected. 

The South Sea Company had been established in 1710 
by Harley himself, and was going along quietly and so- 
berly enough for the time ; but the example of the Missis- 
sippi Company was too strong for it. The South Sea 
Company, too, made to itself waxen wings, and prepared 
to fly above the clouds. The directors offered to relieve 
the State of its debt on condition of obtaining a monopoly 
of the South Sea trade. The nation was to take shares in 
the company in the first instance, and to deal with the 
company, for its commercial and other wares, in the sec- 
ond ; and by means of the exclusive dealing in shares and 
in products it was to pay off the National Debt. In other 
words, three men, all having nothing, and heavily in debt, 
were to go into exclusive dealings with each other, and 
were thus to make fortunes, discharge their liabilities, 
and live in luxury for the rest of their days. Stated 
thus, the proposition looks marvellously absurd. But it 
is not, in its essential conditions, more absurd than many 
a financial project which floats successfully for a time. 
Money-making, the hardest and most practical of all oc- 
cupations, the task which can soonest be tested by results, 
is the business of all others in which men are most easily 
led astray, most greedy to be led astray. Sydney Smith 
s] leaks of a certain French lady whose whole nature cried 
out for her seduction. There are seasons when the whole 
nature of man seems to cry out for his financial seduction. 
The South Sea project expanded and inflated as the Mis- 
sissippi scheme had done. Its temporary success turned 
the heads of the whole population. 

Hundreds of schemes, still more wild, sprang into sud- 
den existence. Some of the projects then put forward, 
and believed in, surpass in senseless extravagance any- 
thing satirized by Ben Jonson. So wild was the passion 
for new enterprises, that it seemed as if, at one time, any- 
body had only to announce any scheme, however prepos- 
terous, in order to find people competing for shares in it. 
The only condition of things in our own time that could 
be compared with this epoch of insane speculation is the 
railway mania of 1846, when, for a brief season, George 
Hudson was king, and set up his hat in the market-place, 
and all England bowed down in homage to it. But the 
epidemic of speculation in the reign of the railway king 
was comparatively harmless and reasonable when com- 
pared with the midsummer madness of the South Sea 
scheme. 

The South Sea scheme was brought before the notice 
of the House of Commons in 1720. The Chancellor of 
the Exchequer was Mr. Aislabie. We have already seen 
Mr. Aislabie as one of the secret committee who recom- 
mended the impeachment of Oxford and Bolingbroke. 



50 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



How well he was fitted for Ms office will appear from the 
fact that he was altogether taken in by the project, and 
by the financial arguments of those who brought it for- 
ward. Sunderland and Stanhope were taken in likewise 
— but there was nothing very surprising in that. A states- 
man of those days did not profess to understand anything 
about finance or economies, unless these subjects hap- 
pened to belong to his department ; and the statesman 
was exceptional who could honestly profess to understand 
them even when they did. Walpole, however, was a min- 
ister of a different order. He was the first of the line of 
statesmen-financiers. He saw through the bubble, and 
endeavored to make others see as clearly as he did him- 
self. Walpole assailed the project in a pamphlet, and op- 
posed it strenuously in his place in Parliament. He was 
not at that time a minister of the Crown ; perhaps, if he 
had been, the South Sea Bill might never have been pre- 
sented to Parliament; but the nation and the Parliament 
were off their heads just then. The caricaturists and the 
authors of lampoon verses positively found out the South 
Sea scheme before the financiers and men of the city. 

On January 22, 1720, the House of Commons, sitting 
in what was then termed a Grand Committee, or what 
would now be called Committee of the whole House, took 
into consideration a proposal of the South Sea Company 
towards the redemption of the public debts. The pro- 
posal set forth that, "the Corporation of the Governor 
and Company of Merchants of Great Britain, trading to 
the South Sea and other parts of America, and for en- 
couraging the fishery, having under their consideration 
how they may be most serviceable to his Majesty and his 
Government, and to show their zeal and readiness to con- 
cur in the great and honorable design of reducing the 
national debts," do "humbly apprehend that if the public 
debts and annuities mentioned in the annexed estimate 
were taken into and made part of the capital stock of the 
said Company, it would greatly contribute to that most 
desirable end." The Company then set forth the condi- 
tions under which they proposed to convert themselves 
into an agency for paying off the national debt, and mak- 
ing a profit for themselves. 

The proposal fell somewhat short of the general expec- 
tation, which looked for nothing less than a sort of finan- 
cial philosopher's stone. Besides, the Bank of England 
was willing to compete with the South Sea Company. 
If the Company could coin money out of cobwebs, why 
should not the Bank be able to accomplish the same 
feat? The friends of the Bank reminded the House of 
Commons of the great services which that corporation 
had rendered to the Government in the most difficult 
times, and urged, with much show of justice, that if any 
advantage was to be made by public bargains, the Bank 
should be preferred before a Company that had never 
done anything for the nation. Well might Aislabie, the 
unfortunate Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose shame 
and ruin we shall soon come to tell of, exclaim in the 
speech which he made when defending himself for the 
second time before the House of Lords, that "the spirit 
of bubbling had prevailed so universally that the very 
Bank became a bubble — and this not by chance or neces- 
sity, or from any engagement to raise money for the pub- 
lic service, but from the same spirit that actuated Tem- 
ple Mills or Caraway's Fishery." In plain truth, as poor 
Aislabie pointed out, the Bank started a scheme in imi- 
tation of the South Sea Company, and the House of 
Commons gave time for its proper development. The 
Bank offered its scheme on February 1st, and by that time 
the South Sea Company had seen their way to mend 
their hand and submit more attractive proposals. Then 
the Bank, not to be out-rivalled, soon made a second pro- 
posal as well. The House took the rival propositions 
into consideration. Walpole was the chief advocate of 
the Bank. No doubt he had come to the reasonable con- 
clusion that if there could be any hope of success for 



such a scheme, it would be found in the Bank of Eng- 
land rather than in the South Sea Company. Mr. Aisla- 
bie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made himself the 
champion of the Company, and assured the House that its 
propositions were of far greater advantage to the country 
than those of the Bank. Under his persuasive influence 
the Rouse agreed to accept the tender, as we may call it, 
of the Company, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
Mr. Secretary Craggs, and others, were ordered to pre- 
pare and bring in a bill to give legislative sanction to the 
scheme. 

The bill passed the Commons and went up to the House 
of Lords. To the credit of the Peers it has to be said 
that they received it more doubtfully, and were slower 
to admit the certainty of its blessings than the members 
of the representative chamber had been. Lord North 
and Gray condemned it as not only making way for, but 
actually countenancing and authorizing "the fraudulent 
and pernicious practice of stock-jobbing." The Duke of 
Wharton declared that "the artificial and prodigious rise 
of the South Sea stock was a dangerous bait, which might 
decoy many unwary people to (heir ruin, and allure them, 
by a false prospect of gain, to part with what they had 
got by their labor and industry to purchase imaginary 
riches." Lord Cowper said that the bill, "like the Tro- 
jan horse, was ushered in and received with great pomp 
and acclamations of joy, but was contrived for treach- 
ery and destruction." Lord Sunderland, however, spoke 
warmly in favor of the bill, and contended that "they 
who countenanced the scheme of the South Sea Company 
had nothing in their view but the easing the nation of 
part of that heavy load of debt it labored under ;" and 
argued that the scheme would enable the directors of the 
Company at once to pay off the debt, and to secure large 
dividends to their share-holders. The Lords decided on 
admitting the South Sea Company's Trojan horse. Eigh- 
ty-three votes were in favor of the bill, and only seven- 
teen against it. The bill was read a third time on April 
7th, and received the Royal assent on June 11th. The 
King's speech, delivered that day at the close of the ses- 
sion, declared that " the good foundation you have pre- 
pared this session for the payment of the national debts, 
and the discharge of a great part of them without the 
least violation of the public faith, will, I hope, strengthen 
more and more the union I desire to see among all my 
subjects, and make our friendship yet more valuable to 
all foreign Powers." 

The immediate result of the Parliamentary authority 
thus given to what was purely a bubble scheme was to 
bring upon the Legislature a perfect deluge of petitions 
from all manner of projectors. Patents and monopolies 
were sought for the carrying on of fisheries in Greenland 
and various other regions ; for the growth, manufacture, 
and sale of hemp, flax, and cotton ; for the making of 
sail - cloth ; for a general insurance against fire ; for the 
planting and rearing of madder to be used by dyers ; for 
the preparing and curing of Virginia tobacco for snuff, 
and making it into the same within all his Majesty's do- 
minions. Schemes such as these were comparatively rea- 
sonable ; but there were others of a different kind. Pe- 
titions were gravely submitted to Parliament praying for 
patents to be granted to the projectors of enterprises for 
trading in hair; for the universal supply of funerals to 
all parts of Great Britain ; for insuring and increasing 
children's fortunes; for insuring masters and mistresses 
against losses from the carelessness or misconduct of ser- 
vants; for insuring against thefts and robberies ; for ex- 
tracting silver from lead ; for the transmutation of silver 
into malleable fine metal ; for buying and fitting out ships 
to suppress pirates; for a wheel for perpetual motion, 
and — with which project, perhaps, we may close our list 
of specimens — "for carrying on an undertaking of great 
advantage, but nobody to know what it is." Of course 
some of these projects were mere vulgar swindles. Even 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



51 



in that season of marvellous projection it is not to be 
supposed that the inventors of the last-mentioned scheme 
had any serious belief in its efficacy. The author of the 
project for the perpetual-motion wheel was, we take it, 
a sincere personage and enthusiast. His scheme has been 
coming up again and again before the world since his 
time; and we have known good men who would have 
staked all they held dear in life upon the possibility of 
its realization. But the would-be patentee of the under- 
taking of great advantage, nobody to know what it is, 
was a man of a different order, lie understood human 
nature in certain of its moods. He knew that there are 
men and women who can be got to believe in anything 
which holds out the promise of quick and easy gain. If 
he found a few dozen greedy and selfish fools to help his 
project with a little money, that would, no doubt, be the 
full attainment of his ends. Probably he was successful. 
The very boldness of his avowal of secrecy would have 
a charm for many. One day would be enough for him — 
the day when he sent in his demand for a patent. The 
bare demand would bring him dupes. 

The first great blow struck at the South Sea Company 
came from the South Sea Company itself. Several bub- 
ble companies began to imitate the financial system which 
the more favored institution had set up. The South Sea 
Company put in motion certain legal proceedings against 
some of the offenders. The South Sea Company had the 
support and countenance of the high legal authorities, 
and found no difficulty in obtaining injunctions against 
the other associations, directing them not to go beyond 
the strict legal privileges secured to them by their char- 
ters of incorporation. Among the undertakings thus 
admonished were the English Copper Company and the 
Welsh Copper and Lead Company. His Royal Highness 
the Prince of Wales happened to be a governor of the 
English Copper Company, and the Lords - justices were 
polite enough to send the Prince a message expressing 
the great regret they felt at having to declare illegal an 
enterprise with which he was connected. The Prince, not 
to be outdone in politeness, received the admonition, we 
are told, " very graciously," and sent on his part a mes- 
sage to the Company requesting them to accept his resig- 
nation, and to elect some one else a governor in his place. 
The proceedings which the South Sea Company had set 
on foot against their audacious rivals and imitators had, 
however, the inconvenient effect of directing too much of 
public attention to the principles upon which they con- 
ducted their own business. Confidence began to waver, 
to be shaken, to give way altogether ; and when people 
ask whether a speculation is a bubble, the bubble, if it is 
one, is already burst. 

The whole basis of Law's system, and of the South Sea 
Company's schemes as well, was the principle that the 
prosperity of a nation is increased in proportion to the 
quantity of money in circulation ; and that as no State 
can have gold enough for all its commercial transactions, 
paper-money may be issued to an unlimited extent, and 
its full value maintained without its being convertible at 
pleasure into hard cash. This supposed principle has been 
proved again and again to be a mere fallacy and paradox; 
but it always finds enthusiastic believers who have plau- 
sible arguments in its support. It appears, indeed, to 
have a singular fascination for some persons in all times 
and communities. It might seem an obvious truism that 
uniler no possible conditions can people in general be got 
to give as much for a promise to pay as for a certain and 
instant payment!; and yet this truism would have to be 
proved a falsehood in order to establish a basis for such 
a project as that of Law. Even were the basis to be es- 
tablished, the project would then have to be worked fair- 
ly and honestly out, which was not done either in the case 
of the Mississippi Company or of the South Sea Com- 
pany. If each had been founded on a true financial prin- 
ciple, each was worked in a false and fraudulent way. 



At its best the South Sea Company in its later develop- 
ment would have been a bubble. Worked as it actually 
was, it proved to be a swindle. A committee of secrecy 
was appointed by the House of Commons to inquire into 
the condition of the Company. The committee found that 
false and fictitious entries had been made in the Com- 
pany's books ; that leaves had been torn out ; that some 
books had been destroyed altogether, and that others had 
been carried off and secreted. The vulgar arts of the 
card-sharper and the thimble-rigger had been prodigally 
employed to avert detection and ruin by the directors of 
a Company which was promoted and protected by minis- 
ters of State and by the favorites of the King. 

Some idea of the wide-spread nature of the disaster 
which was inflicted by the wreck of the Company may 
be formed from a rapid glance at some of the petitions 
for redress and relief which were presented to the House 
of Commons. We find among them petitions from the 
counties of Hertford, Dorset, Essex, Buckingham, Derby; 
the cities of Bristol, Exeter, Lincoln ; the boroughs of 
Oakhampton, Amersham, Bedford, Chipping Wycombe, 
Abingdon, Sudbury, East Retford, Evesham, Newark- 
upon-Trent, Newbury, and many other places. We have 
purposely omitted to take account of any of the London 
communities. The wildest excitement prevailed; and it is 
characteristic of the time to note that the national calam- 
ity — for it was no less — aroused fresh hopes in the minds 
of the Jacobites. Such a calamity, such a scandal, it was 
thought, could not but bring shame and ruin upon the 
WTiig ministers, and through them discredit on the Sov- 
ereign and the Court. It was believed, it was hoped, that 
Sunderland would be found to be implicated in the swin- 
dle. Why should not such a crisis, such a humiliation to 
the Whigs, be the occasion of a new and a more success- 
ful attempt on the part of the Jacobites? The King was 
again in Hanover. He was summoned home in hot haste. 
On December 8, 1720, the two Houses of Parliament were 
assembled to hear the reading of the Royal speech pro- 
roguing the session; and in the speech the King was made 
to express his concern "for the unhappy turn of affairs 
which has so much affected the public credit at home," 
and to recommend most earnestly to the House of Com- 
mons " that you consider of the most effectual and speedy 
methods to restore the national credit, and fix it upon a 
lasting foundation." " You will, I doubt not," the speech 
went on to say, " be assisted in so commendable and nec- 
essary a work by every man that loves his country." A 
week or so before the Royal speech was read, on Novem- 
ber 30, 1720, Charles Edward, eldest son of James Stuart, 
was born at Rome. The undaunted mettle of Atterbury 
came into fresh and vigorous activity with the birth of 
the Stuart heir, and the apparently imminent ruin of the 
Whig ministers. 

Robert Walpole had been spending some time peace- 
fully at his country place, Houghton, in Norfolk. Hunt- 
ing, bull-baiting, and drinking were the principal amuse- 
ments with which Walpole entertained his guests there. 
Sometimes the guests were persons of royal rank (Wal- 
pole once entertained the Grand Duke of Tuscany); 
sometimes the throng of his visitors and his neighbors 
to the hunting-field could only be compared, says a letter 
written at the time, to an army in its inarch. Walpole 
never lost sight, however, of what was going on in the 
metropolis. He used to send a trusty Norfolk man as his 
express-messenger to run all the way on foot from Hough- 
ton to London, and carry letters for him to confidential 
friends, and bring him back the answers. When he found 
how badly things were going in London on the bursting 
of the Smith Sea bubble, he hastened up to town. His 
presence Mas sadly needed there. It is not without inter- 
est to think of James Stuart in Rome, and Walpole in 
Houghton, both keeping their eyes fixed on the gradual 
exposure of the South Sea swindle, and both alike hoping 
to find their account in the national calamity. All the 



52 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



advantage was with the statesman and not with the 
Prince. The English people of all opinions and creeds 
were tolerably well assured that if any one could help 
them out of the difficulty Walpole could; and it required 
the faith of the most devoted Jacobite to make any 
man of business believe that the return of the exiled 
Stuarts could do much to keep off national bankruptcy. 
Walpole had. waited long. His time was now come at 
last. 

Walpole had kept, his head cool during the days when 
the Company was soaring to the skies; he kept his head 
equally cool when it came down with a crash. "He had 
never," he said in the House of Commons, "approved of 
the South Sea scheme, and was sensible it had done a 
great deal of mischief ; but, since it could not be undone, 
he thought it the duty of all good men to give their help- 
ing hand towards retrieving it ; and with this view he hail 
already bestowed some thoughts on a proposal to restore 
public credit, which at the proper time he would submit 
to the wisdom of the House." Walpole had made money 
by the South Sea scheme. The sound knowledge of the 
principles of finance, which enabled him to see that the 
enterprise thus conducted could not pay, in the end ena- 
bled him also to see that it could pay up to a certain 
point; and when that point had been reached he quietly 
sold out and saved his gains. The King's mistresses and 
their relatives also made good profit out of the transac- 
tions. The Prince of Wales was a gainer by some of the 
season's speculations. But when the crash came, the ruin 
was wide-spread; it amounted to the proportions of a 
national calamity. The ruling classes raged and stormed 
against the vile conspirators who had disappointed them 
in their expectations of coining money out of cobwebs. 
The Lords and Commons held inquiries, passed resolu- 
tions, demanded impeachments. It was soon made mani- 
fest beyond all doubt that members of the Government 
had been scandalously implicated in the worst parts of 
the fraudulent speculations. Mr. Aislabie. the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, was only too clearly shown to be one 
of the leading delinquents. Mr. Craggs, the father, Post- 
master-general, and James Craggs, the son, Secretary of 
State, were likewise involved. Both were remarkable 
men. The father had begun life as a common barber, 
and partly by capacity and partly by the thrift that fol- 
lows fawning, had made his way up in the world until he 
reached the height from which he was suddenly and so 
ignominiously to fall. It was hardly worth the trouble 
thus to toil and push and climb, only to tumble down with 
such shame and ruin. Craggs the father had had great 
transfers of South Sea stock made to him for which he 
never paid. Craggs the son, the Secretary of State, had 
acted as the go-between in the transactions of the Com- 
pany with the King's mistresses, whereby the influence of 
these ladies was purchased for a handsome consideration. 
Charles Stanhope, one of the Secretaries to the Treasury 
and cousin of the Minister, was shown to have received 
large value in the stock of the Company for which he 
never paid. The most ghastly ruin fell on some of these 
men. Craggs the younger died suddenly on the very day 
when the report incriminating him was read in the House 
of Commons. Craggs the father poisoned himself a few 
days afterwards. Pope wrote an epitaph on the son, in 
which he described him as — 

" Statesman, yet friend of truth; of soul sincere, 
In action faithful and in honor clear; 
Who broke no promise, served no private end, 
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend." 

Epitaphs seem to have been genuine tributes of per- 
sonal friendship in those days; they had no reference to 
merit or to truth. One's friend had every virtue because 
he was one's friend. Secret committees might condemn, 
Parliament might degrade, juries might convict, impartial 
history might stigmatize, but one's friend remained one's 



friend all the same ; and if one had the gift of verse, was 
to be held up to the admiration of time and eternity in a 
glorifying epitaph. We have fallen on more prosaic days 
now; the living admirer of a modern Craggs would have 
his epitaph unwritten if he could not make facts and feel- 
ings fit better in together. 

A better and more eminent man than Aislabie or either 
Craggs lost his life in consequence of the South Sea ca- 
lamity. No one had accused, or even suspected, Lord 
Stanhope of any share in the financial swindle. Eves 
the fact that his cousin was one of those accused of guilty 
complicity with it did not induce any one to believe that 
the Minister of State had any share in the guilt. Yet 
Stanhope was one of the first victims of the crisis. The 
Duke of Wharton, son of the late Minister, had just come 
of age. He was already renowned as a brilliant, auda- 
cious profligate. He was president of the Hell-fire Club; 
he and some of his comrades were the nightly terror of 
London streets. Wharton thought fit to make himself 
the champion of public purity in the debates on the South 
Sea Company's ruin. He attacked the Ministers fiercely; 
he attacked Stanhope in especial. Stanhope replied to 
him with far greater warmth than the weight of any at- 
tack from Wharton would seem to have called for. Ex- 
cited beyond measure, Stanhope burst a blood-vessel in his 
anger. He was carried home, and he died the next day — 
February 5, 1721. His life had been pure and noble. He 
was a sincere lover of his country; a brave and often a 
successful soldier ; a statesman of high purpose if not of 
the most commanding talents. His career as a soldier 
was brought to a close when he had to capitulate to that 
master of war and profligacy, the Duke de Vendome ; an 
encounter of a different kind with another brilliant profli- 
gate robbed him of his life. 

The House of Commons promptly passed a series of 
resolutions declaring "John Aislabie, Esquire, a Member 
of this House, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and one 
of the Commissioners of his Majesty's Treasury," guilty 
of " most notorious, dangerous, and infamous corruption," 
and ordering his expulsion from the House and his com- 
mittal as a prisoner to the Tower. This resolution was 
carried without a dissentient word. The House of Com- 
mons went on next to consider that part of the report 
which applied to Lord Sunderland, and a motion was 
made declaring that "after the proposals of the South 
Sea Company were accepted by this House, and a bill 
ordered to be brought in thereupon, and befoi-e such bill 
passed, £50,000 of the capital stock of the South Sea 
Company was taken in by Robert Knight, late cashier of 
the said Company, for the use and upon the account of 
Charles, Earl of Sunderland, a Lord of Parliament and 
First Commissioner of the Treasury, without any valuable 
consideration paid, or sufficient security given, for pay- 
ment for or acceptance of the same." 

Sunderland had too many friends, however, and too 
much influence to be dealt with as if he were Aislabie. 
A fierce debate sprang up. The evidence against him 
was not by any means so clear as in the case of Aislabie. 
There was room for a doubt as to Sunderland's personal 
knowledge of all that hail been done in his name. His 
influence ami power secured him the full benefit of the 
doubt. The motion implicating him was rejected by a 
majority of 233 votes against 172 — "which, however," 
says a contemporary account, " occasioned various rea- 
sonings and reflections." Charles Stanhope, too, was 
lucky enough to get off, on a division, by a very narrow 
majority. 

A letter from an English traveller at Rome to his fa- 
ther, bearing date May 6, 1721, and privately printed this 
year (1SS4) for the first time, under the auspices of the 
Clarendon Society of Edinburgh, gives an interesting ac- 
count of the reception of the writer, an English Protes- 
tant, by James Stuart and his wife. That part of the 
letter which is of present interest to us tells of the re- 



A HISTORY OF THE FOLK GEORGES. 



53 



marks made by James on the subject of the South Sea 
catastrophe. James spoke of the investigations of the 
secret committee, from which he hail no great hopes ; for, 
he said, the authors of the calamity ''would find means 
to be above the common course of justice." "Some may 
imagine," continued he, "that these calamities are not 
displeasing to me, because they may in some measure turn 
to my advantage. I renounce all such unworthy thoughts. 
The love of my country is the first principle of my world- 
ly wishes, and my heart bleeds to see so brave and hon- 
est a people distressed and misled by a few wicked men, 
and plunged into miseries almost irretrievable.' 1 "There- 
upon," says the writer of the letter, "he rose briskly from 
his chair, and expressed his concern with fire in his eyes." 
Exiled sovereigns are in the habit of expressing con- 
cern for their country with fire in their eyes; they are 
also in the habit of regarding their own return to power 
as the one sole means of relieving the country from its 
distress. The English gentleman who describes this scene 
represents himself as not to be outdone in patriotism of 
his own even by the exiled Prince. " I could not disavow 
much of what he said; yet I own I was piqued at it, for 
very often compassionate terms from the mouth of an ad- 
verse party are grating. It appeared to me so on this 
occasion ; therefore I replied, 'It's true, sir, that our af- 
fairs in England lie at present under many hardships by 
tlie South Sea's mismanagement; but it is a constant 
maxim with us Protestants to undergo a great deal for 
the security of our religion, which we could not depend 
upon under a Romish Government.'" This speech, not 
over -polite, the Prince took in good part, and entered 
upon an argument so skilfully, " that I am apprehensive 
I should become half a Jacobite if I should continue fol- 
lowing these discourses any longer." "Therefore," says 
the writer, " I will give you my word I will enter no more 
upon arguments of this kind with him." The Prince and 
his visitor were perhaps both playing a part to some ex- 
tent, and the whole discourse was probably a good deal 
less theatric in style than the English traveller has re- 
ported. But there can be no doubt that the letter fair- 
ly illustrates the spirit in which the leading Jacobites 
watched over the financial troubles in England, and the 
new hopes with which they were inspired — hopes destined 
to be translated into new action before very long. Nor 
can it be denied that the speech of the English visitor 
correctly represented the feeling which was growing 
stronger day after day in the minds of prudent people 
at home in England. The time was coming — had almost 
come — when a political disturbance or a financial panic 
in these kingdoms was to be accounted sufficient occasion 
for a change of Ministers, but not for a revolution. 

< IIAPTER XII. 

AFTER THE STOE5I. 

Swift wrote more than one poem on the South Sea 
mania. That which was written in 1721, and is called 
'•South Sea," is a wonder of wit and wisdom. It shows 
tli" hollowness of the scheme in some new, odd, and 
striking light in every metaphor and every verse. "A 
guinea," Swift reminds his readers, " will not pass at mar- 
ket for a farthing more, shown through a multiplying 
glass, than what it always did befoi-e." 

" So cast it in tli.' Southern Seas, 

And view it through a jobber's bill, 
Put en what spectacles you please, 

Your guinea's but a guinea still." 

Other poets had not as much prudence and sound sense 
as Swift. Pope put some of his money, a good deal of 
it, into South Sea stock, contrary to the earnest advice 
of Atterbury, and lost it. Swift reflected faithfully the 
temper of the time in savage verses, which eall out for 
the punishment by death of the fraudulent directors of 



the Company. Antnans, Swift tells us, was always re- 
stored to fresh strength as often as he touched the earth; 
Hercules subdued him at last by holding him up in the 
air and strangling him there. Suspended a while in the 
air, according to the same principle, our directors, he ad- 
monishes the country, will be properly tamed and dealt 
with. Many public enemies of the directors gave them- 
selves credit for moderation and humanity on the ground 
that they would not have the culprits tortured to death, 
but merely executed in the ordinary way. 

Walpole set himself first of all to restore public credit. 
His object was not so much the punishment of fraudulent 
directors as the tranquillizing of the public mind and the 
subsidence of national panic. He proposed one measure 
in the first instance to accomplish this end ; but that not 
being sufficiently comprehensive, he introduced another 
bill, which was finally adopted by both Houses of Par- 
liament. Briefly described, this seheme so adjusted the 
financial affairs of the South Sea Company that five mill- 
ions of the seven which the directors had agreed to pay 
the public were remitted; the encumbrances to the Com- 
pany were cleared off to a certain extent by the confisca- 
tion of the estates of the fraudulent directors; the credit 
of the Company's bonds was maintained; thirty -three 
pounds six shillings and eightpence per cent, were di- 
vided among the proprietors, and two millions were re- 
served towards the liquidation of the national debt. The 
Company was therefore put into a position to carry out 
its various public engagements, and the panic was soon 
over. Many of the proprietors of the Company com- 
plained bitterly of the manner in which they had been 
treated by Walpole. The lobbies of the House of Com- 
mons and all the adjacent places were crowded by pro- 
prietors of the short annuities and other redeemable pop- 
ular deeds ; men and women who, as the contemporary 
accounts tell us, " in a rude and insolent manner de- 
manded justice of the members as they went into the 
House," and put into their hands a paper with the words 
written on it, "Pray do justice to the annuitants who 
lent their money on Parliamentary security." "The 
noisy multitude," we are told, " were particularly rude to 
Mr. Comptroller, tearing part of his coat as he passed 
by." The Speaker of the House was informed that a 
crowd of people had got together in a riotous and tumult- 
uous manner in the lobbies and passages, and he ordered 
" that the Justices of the Peace for the City of West- 
minster do immediately attend this House and bring the 
constables with them." While the justices and the con- 
stables were being sent for, Sir John Ward was present- 
ing to the House a petition from the proprietors of the 
redeemable funds, setting forth that they had lent their 
money to the South Sea Company on Parliamentary se- 
curity; that they had been unwarily drawn into subscrib- 
ing for the shares in the Company by the artifices of the 
directors; and they prayed that they might be heard by 
themselves or their counsel against Walpole's measure — 
the Bill "for making several provisions to restore the 
public credit, which suffers by the frauds and misman- 
agement of the late South Sea directors and others." 
Walpole opposed the petition, and said he did not see 
how the petitioners could be relieved, seeing that the 
resolutions, in pursuance of which his bill was brought 
in, had been approved by the King and council, and by a 
great majority of the House. Walpole, therefore, moved 
that the debate be adjourned, in order to get rid of the 
matter. The motion was carried by seventy-eight voices 
against twenty-nine. By this time four Justices for the 
City of Westminster had arrived, and were brought to 
the bar of the House. The Speaker informed them that 
there was a great crowd of riotous people in the lobbies 
and passages, and that he was commanded by the House 
to direct them to go and disperse the crowd, and take 
care to prevent similar riots in the future. The four jus- 
tices, attended by five or six constables, desired the peti- 



54 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



tioners to clear the lobbies, and when they refused to do 
so, caused a proclamation against rioters to be twice read, 
warning them at the same time that if they remained 
until the third reading, they would have to incur the pen- 
alties of the Act. What the penalties of the Act were, 
and what the four justices and five or six constables 
could have done with the petitioners if the petitioners 
had refused to listen to reason, do not seem very clear. 
The petitioners, however, did listen to reason, ami dis- 
persed before the fatal third reading of the proclamation. 
But they did not disperse without giving the House of 
Commons and the justices a piece of their mind. Many 
exclaimed thai they had come as peaceable citizens and 
subjects to represent, their grievances, and had not ex- 
pected t<> be used like a mob and scoundrels; and others, 
as they went out, shouted to the members of Parliament, 
"You first pick our pockets, and then send us to jail for 
complaining." 

The Bill went up to the House of Lords on Monday, 
August 7th, and the Lords agreed to it without an amend- 
ment. On Thursday, August loth, Parliament was pro- 
rogued. The Lord 'Chancellor read the King's speech. 
'•The common calamity," said his Majesty, " occasioned 
by the wicked execution of the South Sea scheme, was be- 
come so very great before your meeting that the provid- 
ing proper remedies for it was very difficult. But it is 
a great comfort to me to observe that public credit now 
begins to recover, which gives me the greatest hopes that 
it will be entirely restored when all the provisions you 
have made for that end shall be duly put in execution." 
The speech went on to tell of his Majesty's "great com- 
passion for the sufferings of the innocent, and a just indig- 
nation against the guilty;" and added that the King had 
readily given his assent "to such bills as you have pre- 
sented to me for punishing the authors of our late mis- 
fortunes, and for obtaining the restitution and satisfac- 
tion due to those who have been injured by them in such 
manner as you judged proper." Certainly there was no 
lack of severity in the punishment inflicted on the fraud- 
ulent directors. Their estates were confiscated with Such 
rigor that some id' them were reduced to miserable pover- 
ty. They were disqualified from ever holding any public 
place or office whatever, and from ever having a seat in 
Parliament. Yet, severely as they were punished, the 
outcry of the public at the time was that they had been 
let off far loo easily. Walpole was denounced because 
he did not carry their punishment much farther. There 
was even a, ridiculous report spread abroad that he had 
defended Sunderland and screened the directors from the 
tnosl ignoble and sordid motives, and that he had been 
handsomely paid for his compromise with crime. Noth- 
ing would have satisfied some of the sufferers by the 
Smith Sea scheme short of the execution of its principal 
directors. Even (he scaffold, however, could hardly have 
dealt more stern and summary justice on the criminals — 
as some of them undoubtedly were — than did tile actual 
course of events. When the storm cleared away, Aislabie 
was ruined; ('rages, the Post master-general, was dead; 
CraggS, the Secretary of State, was dead ; Lord Stanhope. 
who was really innocent — was really unsuspected of any 
share in the crimes of the fraudulent directors — was dead 
also; Sunderland was no longer a Minister of State, and 
the shadow of death was already on him. It was not 
merely the bursting of a bubble, it was the bursting of 
a shell —it mutilated or killed those who stood around 
and near. 

By the time of the new elect ions— for Parliament had 
now nearly run its course — public tranquillity was entire- 
ly restored. Parliament was dissolved in March, 1722, 
and the new (lections left Walpole and his friends in 
power, with an immense majority at their back. I. one 
before the new Parliament had time to assemble, Lord 
Sunderland suddenly died of heart disease. On April L9, 
1722, his death took place, and it was so unexpected that 



a wild outcry was raised by some of his friends, who in- 
sisted that his enemies had poisoned him. The medical 
examination proved, however, that Sunderland's disease 
was one which might at any moment of excitement have 
brought on his death. Nearly all the leading public men 
who, innocent or guilty, had been mixed up with the evil 
schemes of the South' Sea Company were now in the 
grave. 

The field seemed now clear and open to Walpole. The 
death of Sunderland, following so soon on that of Stan- 
hope, had left him apparently without a rival. Sunder- 
land had been to the last a political, and even a personal, 
enemy of Walpole. Although Walpole had gone so far 
to protect Sunderland against the House of Commons 
and against public opinion, with regard to his share in 
the Smith Sea Company's transactions, Sunderland could 
not forgive Walpole because Walpole was rising higher 
in the State — because he was, in fact, the greater man. 
Though Sunderland was compelled by public opinion to 
resign office, he had contrived, up to the hour of his 
death, to maintain his influence over the mind of King- 
George. Fortunately for George, the King had too much 
(dear, robust good - sense not to recognize the priceless 
worth of Walpole's advice and Walpole's services. Sun- 
derland tried one ingenious artifice to get rid of Walpole. 
He suggested to George that Walpole's merits required 
some special and permanent recognition, and he recom- 
mended that the King should create Walpole Postmaster- 
general for life. Such an office, indeed, would have 
brought Walpole an ample revenue, supposing he stood 
in need of money, which he did not, but it would have 
disqualified him forever for a seat in Parliament. Per- 
haps no better illustration of Sunderland's narrow intel- 
lect and utter lack of judgment could lie found than the 
supposition that this shallow trick could succeed, and that 
the greatest administrator of his time could be thus qui- 
etly withdrawn from Parliamentary life and from the 
higher work of the State, and shelved in perpetuity as a 
Postmaster-general. King George was not to be taken 
in after this fashion. He asked Sunderland whether 
Walpole wished for such an office, or was acquainted 
with Sunderland's intention to make the suggestion. 
Sunderland had to answer both questions in the negative. 
"Then," said the King, "pray do not make him any such 
oiler, or say anything about it to him. I had to part with 
him once, much against my will, and so long as he is will- 
ing to serve me I will never part with him again." This 
incident shows that, if Sunderland had lived, he would 
have plotted against Walpole to the end, and would have 
stood in Walpole's way to the best of his power, and with 
all the unforgiving hostility of the narrow-minded and 
selfish man who has had services rendered him for which 
he ought to feel grateful but cannot. 

.V far greater man than Sunderland was soon to pass 
away. 

"From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow." 

These are the famous words in which Johnson depicts the 
miserable decay of a great spirit, and points anew the 
melancholy moral of the vanity of human wishes. Hard- 
ly a line in the poetry of our language is better known 
or more often quoted. Where did Johnson get the idea 
that Marlborough had sunk into dotage before his death? 
There is not the slightest foundation for such a belief. 
All that we know of Marlborough's closing days tells us 
the contrary. Nothing in Marlborough's life, not even 
his serene disregard of dangers and difficulties, not even 
his victories, became him like to the leaving id' it. No 
great man ever sank more gracefully, more gently, with 
a calmer spirit, down to his rest. AW' eel some charm- 
ing pictures of Marlborough's closing days. Death had 
given him warning by repeated paralytic strokes. On 
November 27, 1721, he was seen for the last time in the 
House of Lords, lie was not, however, quite near his 






A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



55 



death even then. Ho used to spend his time at Blen- 
heim, or at his lodge in Windsor. To the last he was 
fond of riding and driving and the fresh country air. 
In-doors he loved to be surrounded by his granddaughters 
and their young friends, and to join in games of cards 
ami other amusements with l hem. They used to get up 
private theatricals to gratify the gentle old warrior. We 
hear of a version of Dryden's "All for Love" being thus 
performed. The Duchess of Marlborough had cut out of 
the play its unseemly passages, and even its too amorous 
expressions — the reader will probably think there was 
not much left of the piece when this work of purifica- 
tion had been accomplished — and she would not allow 
any embracing to be performed. The gentleman who 
played Mark Antony wore a sword which had been pre- 
sented to Marlborough by the Emperor. The part of 
the high- priest was played by a pretty girl, a friend 
of Marlborough's granddaughters, and she wore as high- 
priest's robe what seems to have been a lady's night- 
dress, gorgeously embroidered with special devices for 
the occasion. A prologue, written by Dr. Hoadly, was 
read, in which the glories of the great Duke's career 
were glowingly recounted. Some painter, it seems to 
us, might make a pretty picture of this: the "great hall 
in Blenheim turned into a theatre, the handsome young 
men and pretty girls enacting their chastened parts, the 
fading old hero looking at the scene with pleased and 
kindly eyes, and the imperious, loving old Duchess turn- 
ing her devoted gaze on him. 

So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies the con- 
queror of Blenheim, the greatest soldier England ever 
had since the days when kings ceased to be as a matter 
of right her chiefs in command. In the early days of 
June, 1722, Marlborough was stricken by another para- 
lytic seizure, and this was his last. He was in full pos- 
session of his senses to the end, perfectly conscious and 
calm. He knew that he was dying ; he had prayers 
read to him; he conveyed in many tender ways his feel- 
ings of affection for his wife, and of hope for his own fut- 
ure. At four in the morning of June 10th his life ebbed 
quietly away. He was in his seventy-second year when 
he died. None of the great deeds of his life belong to 
this history; none of that life's worst offences have much 
to do with it. Marlborough's career seems to us abso- 
lutely faultless in two of its aspects; as a commander 
and as a husband we can only give him praise. He was 
probably a greater commander than even the Duke of 
Wellington. If he never had to encounter a Napoleon, 
he had to meet and triumph over difficulties which never 
came in Wellington's way. It was not Wellington's fate 
to have to strive against political treachery of the basest 
kind on the part of English Ministers of State. Well- 
ington's enemies were all in the field arrayed against 
him ; Marlborough had to fight the foreign enemy on 
the battle-field, and to struggle meanwhile against the 
persistent treachery of the still more formidable enemy 
at home in the council - chamber of his own sovereign. 
Perhaps, indeed, Wellington's nature would not have per- 
mitted him to succeed under such difficulties. Welling- 
ton could hardly have met craft with craft, and, it must 
he added, falsehood with falsehood, as Marlborough did. 
We have said in this book already that even for that age 
of double-dealing Marlborough was a surprising double- 
dealer, and there were many passages in his career which 
are evidences of an astounding capacity for deceit. "He 
was a gnat man," said his enemy, Lord Peterborough, 
"and 1 have forgotten his faults." Historians would 
gladly do the same if they could; would surely dwell 
with much more delight on the virtues and the great- 
ness than on the defects. The English people were gen- 
erous to Marlborough, and in the way which, it has to be 
confessed, was most welcome to him. But if a very treas- 
ure-house of gold could not have satisfied his love of mon- 
ey, let it be added that the national treasure-house itself, 



were it poured out at his feet, could not have overpaid 
the services which he had rendered to his country. 

Marlborough left no son to inherit his honors and his 
fortune. His titles and estates descended to his eldest 
daughter, the Countess of Godolphin. She died without 
leaving a son, and the titles and estates passed over to 
the Earl of Sunderland, the son and heir of Marlborough's 
second daughter, at that time long dead. From the day 
when the victor of Blenheim died, there has been no 
Duke of Marlborough distinguished in anything but the 
name. Not one of the world's great soldiers, it would 
seem, w r as destined to have a great soldier for a son. 
From great statesman fathers sometimes spring great 
statesman sons; but Alexander, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, 
Charles the Twelfth, Alexander Farnese, Clive, Marlbor- 
ough, Frederick, Napoleon, Wellington, Washington, left 
to the world no heir of their greatness. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE BANISHMENT OP ATTEKBUEY. 

On Thursday, August 9, 1722, the "pompous solem- 
nity" of Marlborough's funeral took place. The great 
procession went from the Duke's house in St. James's 
Park through St. James's and the Upper Park to Hyde 
Park Corner, and thence through Piccadilly, St. James's 
Street, Pall Mall, Charing Cross, and King Street to West- 
minster Abbey. A small army of soldiers guarded the 
remains of the greatest warrior of his age; a whole her- 
alds' college clustered about the lofty funeral banner 
on which all the arms of the Churchills were quartered. 
Marlborough's friends and admirers, his old brothers-in- 
arms, the companions of his victories, followed his coffin, 
and listened wdiile Garter King-at . - Arms, bending over 
the open grave, said : "Thus it hath pleased Almighty 
God to take out of this transitory life unto His mercy 
the most high, most mighty, and most noble prince, John 
Churchill, Duke and Earl of Marlborough." 

In Applebee's WegHy Journal for Saturday, August 1 1th, 
tw T o days after the funeral, we are told that the Duchess 
of Marlborough, in honor of the memory of her life-long 
lover, had offered a prize of five hundred pounds for a 
Latin epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb, and that 
"several poets have already taken to their lofty studies 
to contend for the prize." 

At Marlborough's funeral we see for the last time in 
high public estate one of the few Englishmen of the day 
who could properly be named in the same breath with 
Marlborough. This was Francis Atterbury, the eloquent 
and daring Bishop of Rochester. Atterbury came up to 
town for the purpose of officiating at the funeral of the 
great Duke. On July 30, 1722, he w r rote from the coun- 
try to his friend Pope, announcing his visit to London. 
"I go to - morrow," Atterbury writes, "to the Deanery, 
and I believe I shall stay there till I have said dust to 
dust, and shut up this last scene of pompous vanity." 
Atterbury does not seem to have been profoundly im- 
pressed with the religious solemnity of the occasion. His 
was not a very reverential spirit. There was as little of 
the temper of pious sanctity in Atterbury as in Swift him- 
self. The allusion to the last scene of pompous vanity 
might have had another significance, as .well as that which 
Atterbury meant to give to it. Amid the pomp in which 
Marlborough's career went out, the career of Atterbury 
went out as well, although in a different way, and not 
closed sublimely by death. After the funeral, Atterbury 
went to the Deanery at Westminster — he was Dean of 
Westminster as well as Bishop of Rochester — -and there, 
on August 24th, the clay but one after the scene of pompous 
vanity, he was arrested by the Under-Secretary of State, 
accompanied by two officers of justice, and was brought, 
along with all papers of his wdiich the officers could seize, 
before the Privy Council. He underwent an examina- 
tion, as the result of which he was committed to the 



56 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



Tower, on a charge of having been concerned in a trea- 
sonable conspiracy to dethrone the King-, and to bring 
back the House of Stuart. In the Tower lie was left to 
languish for many a long day before it was found conven- 
ient to bring him to trial. 

England was startled by the disclosures which followed 
Atterbury's arrest. On Tuesday, October 9, 1722, the 
sixth Parliament of Great Britain — the sixth, that is to 
gay, since tin- union with Scotland — met at Westminster. 
The House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Pnlteney, 
elected Mr. Spencer Compton their Speaker, and on the 
next day but one, October 11th, the Royal speech was read. 
The Kino- was present in person, but the speech was read 
by the Lord Chancellor, for the good reason which we 
have already mentioned that his Majesty the King of 
England could not speak the English language. The 
speech opened with a startling announcement. " My 
Lords and Gentlemen" — so ran the words of the Sover- 
eign — "I am concerned to find myself obliged, at the 
opening of this Parliament, to acquaint you that a danger- 
ous conspiracy has been for some time formed, ami is still 
carrying mi, against my person and government, in favor 
of a Popish pretender." ''Some of the conspirators," the 
speech went on to say, "have been taken up and secured, 
and endeavors are used for the apprehending others." 
When the speech was read, and the King had left the 
House, the Duke of Grafton, then Lord-lieutenant of Ire- 
land, brought in a bill for suspending the Habeas Corpus 
Act, and empowering the Government to secure and de- 
tain "such persons as his Majesty shall suspect are con- 
spiring against his person and government, for the space 
of one year." The motion to read the Bill a second time 
in the same sitting was strenuously resisted by a consid- 
erable minority of the Peers. A warm debate took place, 
and in the end the second reading was carried by a ma- 
jority of sixty-seven against twenty-four. The debate was 
renewed upon the other stages of the Bill, which were 
taken in rapid succession. The proposal of the Govern- 
ment was, of course, carried in the end, but it met with a 
resistance in the House of Lords which certainly would not 
have been offered to such a proposal by any member of 
the hereditary chamber in our day. Some of the recorded 
protests of dissentient peers read more like the utterances 
of modern Radicals than those of influential members of 
the House of Lords. The strongest objection made to 
the proposal was that the utmost term for which the Con- 
stitution had previously been suspended was six months, 
and that the measure to suspend it for a year would be- 
come an authority for suspending it at some future time 
for two years, or three years, or any term which might 
please the ministers in power. On .Monday, October loth, 
the Bill was brought down to the Commons, and was read 
a first time on the motion of Walpole. The Bill was 
passed in the Commons, not, indeed, without opposition, 
but with an opposition much less strenuous and influen- 
tial than that which had been offered to it in the House 
of Lords. On October 17th it was announced to Parlia- 
ment that Dr. Atterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, the 
Lord North and Grey, and the Earl of Orrery, had been 
committed to the Tower on a charge of high-treason. A 
lew days after, a similar announcement was made about 
the arrest anil committal of the Duke of Norfolk. 

By far the most important of the persons committed 
for trial was the Bishop of Rochester. Francis Atter- 
bury may rank among the most conspicuous public men 
of his time. He stands only just beneath Marlborough 
and Bolingbroke and Walpole. Steele, in his sixty-sixth 
Taller, pays a high tribute to Atterbury: "lie has so 
much regard to his congregation that lie commits to 
memory what he has to say to them, and lias so soft and 
graceful a behavior that it must attract your attention. 
His person, it is to be confessed, is no slight recommen- 
dation ; but he is to be highly commended for not losing 
that advantage, and adding to a propriety of speech which 



might pass the criticism of Longinus, an action which 
would have been approved by Demosthenes. He has a 
peculiar force in his way, and has many of his audience 
who could not be intelligent hearers of his discourse were 
there not explanation as well as grace in his action. This 
art of his is used with the most exact and honest skill ; 
he never attempts your passions until he has convinced 
your reason; all the objections which he can form are 
laid open and dispersed before he uses the least vehe- 
mence in his sermon ; but when he thinks he has your 
head he very soon wins your heart, and never pretends to 
show the beauty of holiness until he hath convinced you 
of the truth of it." 

Atterbury had, however, among his many gifts a dan- 
gerous gift of political intrigue. Like Swift and Dubois 
ami Alberoni. he was at least as much statesman as church- 
man. He had mixed himself up in various intrigues — 
some of them could hardly be called conspiracies — for 
the restoration of the Stuarts, and when at last something 
like a new conspiracy was planned, it was not likely that 
he would be left, out of it. He had courage enough for 
any such scheme. There was no great difficulty in finding 
out the new plot which King George mentioned in his 
speech to Parliament . ; for James Stuart had revealed it 
himself by a proclamation which he caused to be circu- 
lated among his supposed adherents in England, renew- 
ing in the boldest terms his claim to the crown of Eng- 
land. A sort of junto of Jacobites appears to have been 
established in England to make arrangements for a new 
attempt on the part of James; the noblemen whom King 
George had arrested were understood to be among its 
leading members. Atterbury was charged with having 
taken a prominent if not, indeed, a foremost part in the 
conspiracy. The Duke of Norfolk, Lord North and Grey, 
and Lord Orrery were afterwards discharged for want 
of evidence to convict them. The arrest of a number 
of humbler conspirators led to the discovery of a corre- 
spondence asserted to have been carried on betw'een At- 
terbury and the adherents of James Stuart in France and 
Italy. 

Both Houses of Parliament began by voting addresses 
of loyalty and gratitude to the King, and by resolving 
that the proclamation entitled "Declaration of James the 
Third, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, to all his 
loving subjects of the three nations," and signed "James 
Rex," was "a false, insolent, and traitorous libel," and 
should be burned by the hands of the common hangman, 
umler the direction of the sheriffs of London. This im- 
portant ceremonial was duly carried out at the Royal 
Exchange. Then the House of Commons voted, "that 
towards raising the supply, and reimbursing to the pub- 
lic the great expenses occasioned by the late rebellions 
and disorders, the sum of one hundred thousand pounds 
lie raised and levied upon the real and personal estates of 
all Papists, Popish recusants, or persons educated in the 
Popish religion, or whose parents are Papists, or who 
shall profess the Popish religion, in lieu of all forfeitures 
already incurred for or upon account of their recusancy." 
This singular method of infusing loyalty into the Roman 
Catholics of England was not allowed to be adopted with- 
out serious and powerful resistance in the House of Com- 
mons. The idea was not to devise a new penalty for the 
Catholics, but to put in actual operation the terms of a 
former penalty pronounced against them in Elizabeth's 
time, and not then pressed into execution. This fact was 
dwelt upon with much emphasis by the advocates of the 
penal motion. Why talk of religious persecution? they 
asked. This is not religious persecution; it is only put- 
ting in force an edict passed in a former reign to punish 
Roman Catholics for political rebellion. This way of 
putting the case seems only to make the character of the 
policy more clear and less justifiable. The Catholics of 
King George's time were to be mulcted indiscriminately 
because the Catholics of Queen Elizabeth's time had been 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



at 



declared liable to such a penalty. The Master of the 
liolls, to his great credit, strongly opposed the resolution. 
Wftlpole supported it with all the weight of his argu- 
ment and his influence. The plot was evidently a Popish 
plot, he contended, and although he was not prepared to 
accuse any English Catholic in particular of taking part 
in it, yet there could be no doubt that Papists in general 
were well-wishers to it, and that some of them had con- 
tributed large sums towards it. Why, then, should they 
not be made to reimburse some part of the expense to 
which they and the friends of the Pretender had put the 
nation? The resolution, after it had been reported from 
committee, was only carried in the whole House by 188 
votes against 17'-'. The resolution was embodied in a 
lull, and the Bill, when it went up to the House of Lords, 
was opposed there by several of the Peers, and especially 
by Lord Cowper, the " silver-tongued Cowper," who had 
been so distinguished a Lord Chancellor under Anne, and 
under George himself. Lord Cowper's was an eloquent 
and a powerful speech. It tore to pieces the wretched 
web of flimsy sophistry by which the supporters of the 
Bill endeavored to make out that it was not a measure 
of religious persecution. Indeed, there were some of 
these who insisted that, so far from being a measure of 
persecution, it was a measure of relief. Our readers will, 
no doubt, be curious to know how this bold position was 
sustained. In this wise : the penalties prescribed for the 
Catholics in Elizabeth's reign were much greater in 
amount than those which the Bill proposed to inflict on 
the Catholics of King George's time ; therefore the Bill 
was an indulgence and not a persecution — a mitigation 
of penalty, not a punishment. Let us reduce the argu- 
ment to plain figures. A Catholic in the reign of Eliza- 
beth is declared liable to a penalty of twenty pounds, 
but out of considerations of humanity or justice the pen- 
alty is not enforced. The descendant and heir of that 
same Catholic in the reign of George the First is fined 
fifteen pounds, and the fine is exacted. He complains, 
and he is told, " You have no right to complain ; you 
ought to be grateful ; the original tine ordained was 
twenty pounds ; you have been let off five pounds — you 
have been favored by an act of indulgence, not victim- 
ized by an act of persecution." Lord Cowper had not 
much trouble in disposing of arguments of this kind, but 
his speech took a wider range, and is indeed a masterly 
exposure of the whole principle on which the measure 
was founded. On May 22, 1723, sixty-nine peers voted 
for the third reading of the Bill, and fifty-five opposed 
it. Lord Cowper, with twenty other peers, entered a pro- 
test against the decision of the House, according to a 
practice then common in the House of Lords, and which 
has lately fallen into complete disuse. The recorded pro- 
tests of dissentient peers form, we may observe, very im- 
portant historical documents, and deserve, some of them, 
a careful study. Lord Cowper's protest was the last pub- 
lic act of his useful and honorable career. He died on 
the 10th of October in the same year, 1723. Some of his 
enemies explained his action on the anti-Papist Bill by 
the assertion that he was a Jacobite at heart. Even if 
he had been, the fact would hardly have made his con- 
duct less creditable and spirited. Many a man who was 
a Jacobite at heart would have supported a measure for 
the punishment of Roman Catholics if only to save him- 
self from the suspicion of sympathy with the lost cause. 

This, however, was but an episode in the story of the 
Jacobite plot and the measures taken to punish those who 
were engaged in it. Committees of secrecy were ap- 
pointed by" Parliament to inquire into the evidence and 
examine witnesses. 

Meantime both Houses of Parliament kept voting ad- 
dress after address to the Crown at each new stage of the 
proceedings, and as each fresh evidence of the conspiracy 
was laid before them. The King must have grown rath- 
er weary of finding new words of gratitude, and the 



Houses of Parliament, one would think, must have grown 
tired of inventing new phrases of loyalty and fresh ex- 
pressions of horror at the wickedness of the Jacobites. 
The horror was not qui to genuine on the part of some 
who thus proclaimed it. Many of those who voted the 
addresses would gladly have welcomed a restoration of 
the Stuarts. Not the most devoted adherent of King 
George could really have felt any surprise at the persist- 
ent efforts of the Jacobite partisans. Eight years before 
this it was a mere toss-up whether Stuart or Hanover 
should succeed, and even still it was not quite certain 
whether, if the machinery of the modern plebiscite could 
have been put into operation in England, the majority 
would not have been found in sympathy with Atterbury. 
It is almost certain that if the plebiscite could have been 
taken in Ireland and Scotland also, a majority of voices 
would have voted James Stuart to the throne. 

It was resolved to proceed against Atterbury by a Bill 
of Pains and Penalties to be brought into Parliament. 
The evidence against him was certainly not such as any 
criminal court would have held to justify a conviction. 
A young barrister named Christopher Layer was arrest- 
ed and examined, so were a nonjuring minister named 
Kelly, an Irish Catholic priest called Neynoe, and a man 
named Plunkett, also from Ireland. The charge against 
Atterbury was founded on the statements obtained or ex- 
torted from these men. It should be said that Layer 
gave evidence which actually' seemed to impugn Lord 
Cowper himself as a member of a club of disaffected per- 
sons ; and when Lord Cowper indignantly repudiated 
the charge and demanded an inquiry, the Government 
declared inquiry absolutely unnecessary, as everybody 
was well assured of his innocence. The Government, 
however, declined to follow Lord Cowper in his not un- 
reasonable assumption that the whole story was unworthy 
of explicit credence when it included such a false state- 
ment. The case against Atterbury rested on the declara- 
tion of some of the arrested men that the bishop had car- 
ried on a correspondence with James Stuart, Lord Mar, 
and General Dillon (an Irish Catholic soldier, who after 
the capitulation of Limerick, had entered the French ser- 
vice), through the instrumentality of Kelly, who acted as 
his secretary and amanuensis for that purpose. It was a 
case of circumstantial evidence altogether. The impar- 
tial reader of history now will feel well satisfied on two 
points : first, that Atterbury was engaged in the plot ; 
and second, that the evidence brought against him was 
not nearly strong enough to sustain a conviction. It was 
the case of Bolingbroke and Ilarley over again. We 
know now that the men had done the things charged 
against them, but the evidence then relied upon was ut- 
terly inadequate to sustain the charge. 

A "Dialogue in Verse between a Whig and a Tory" 
was written by Swift in the year 1723, " concerning the 
horrid plot discovered by Harlequin, the Bishop of Roch- 
ester's French Dog." The Whig tells the Tory that the 
dog— 

" His name is Harlequin, I wot, 
And Unit's a name in every plot" — 

was generously 

" Resolved to save the British nation, 
Though French by birth and education ; 
His correspondence plainly dated 
Was all deciphered and translated ; 
His answers were exceeding pretty, 
Before the secret wise committee; 
Confessed as plain as he could bark, 
Then with his fore-foot set his mark." 

There was more than mere fooling in the lines. The 
dog Harlequin was made to bear important evidence 
against the Bishop of Rochester. Atterbury had never 
resigned himself to the Hanoverian dynasty. He did not 
believe it would last, and he openly 7 declaimed against it. 
He did more than this, however: he engaged in conspira- 



58 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



cies for the restoration of James Stuart. Horace Walpole 
says of him that he was simply a Jacobite priest. He was 
a Jacobite priest who would gladly, if he could, have been 
a Jacobite soldier, and had given ample evidence of cour- 
age equal to such a part. He had been engaged in a long 
correspondence with Jacobite conspirators at home and 
abroad. The correspondence was carried on in cipher, 
and of course under feigned names. Atterbury appears 
to have been described now as Mr. Illington, and now as 
Mr. Jones. Atterbury refused to make any defence be- 
fore the House of Commons, but he appeared before the 
House of Lords on May 6, 1723, and defended himself, and 
made strong and eloquent protestation of his innocence. 
One of the witnesses whom he called in his defence was 
his friend Pope, who could only give evidence as to the 
manner in which the bishop had passed his time when 
staying in the poet's house. Christopher Layer, Atter- 
bury's associate in the general charge of conspiracy, was 
a young barrister of good family, a remarkably handsome, 
graceful, and accomplished man. One charge against him 
was that he had formed a plan to murder the King and 
carry off the Prince of Wales; but the statements made 
against Layer must be taken with liberal allowance for 
the extravagance of loyal passion, paint', and exaggera- 
tion. Layer had escaped and was recaptured, was tried, 
found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was hanged at 
Tyburn on March 15, 1723 ; he met his death with calm 
courage. His body was quartered and his head was set 
on Temple Bar, from which it was presently blown down 
by the wind. Some one picked up the head and sold it to 
a surgeon. Neynoe, another of the accused men, con- 
trived to escape from custody, got to the river, endeav- 
ored to swim across it, and was drowned in the attempt. 

The charges made against Atterbury had therefore 
sometimes to rest upon inferences drawn from confes- 
sions, or portions of confessions, averred to have dropped 
or been drawn from men whose lips were now closed by 
death. Those who defended Atterbury dwelt strongly on 
this fact, as was but natural. It is curious to notice how 
often in the debates of the Lords on the Bill of Pains and 
Penalties one noble peer accuses another of secret sym- 
pathy with Jacobite schemes. As regards Atterbury, the 
whole question was whether he was really the person de- 
scribed in the correspondence now as Jones and now as 
Illington. There might have been no evidence which even 
a "secret, wise" committee of that day would have cared 
to accept but for the fact that the bishop's wife had re- 
ceived, or was to have received, from France a present of 
a dog called Harlequin, and that there was mention in the 
correspondence about poor Mr. Illington being in grief for 
the loss of his dog Harlequin. This allusion put the com- 
mittee of secrecy on the track. The bishop's wife had 
lately died, and it would seem from the correspondence that 
Illington's wife had died about the same time. Clearly, 
if it were once assumed that Illington and Atterbury were 
one and the same person, there was ample ground for sus- 
picion, and even for a general belief that the story told 
was true in the main. The evidence was enough for Par- 
liament at thai time, and the Bill passed the House of 
Lords on May 16th by a majority of eighty-three votes to 
forty-three. Atterbury was deprived of all his offices and 
dignities, declared to be forever incapable of holding any 
place or exercising any authority within the King's domin- 
ions, and condemned to perpetual banishment. He went 
to France in the first instance with his daughter and her 
husband. It so happened that Bolingbroke had just at that 
time obtained a sort of conditional pardon from the King ; 
obtained it mainly by bribing the Duchess of Kendal. 
The two Jacobites crossed each other on the way, one 
going into exile, the other returning from it. "I am ex- 
changed," was Atterbury'.s remark. "The nation," said 
Pope afterwards, " is afraid of being overrun with genius, 
and cannot regain one great man but at the expense of 
another." So far as this history is concerned we part 



with Atterbury here. He lived abroad until 1731, and 
after his death his remains were brought back and pri- 
vately laid in Westminster Abbey. 

We have directed attention to the freedom and fre- 
quency of the accusations of Jacobitism made by one 
peer against another during the debates on Atterbury's 
ease. The fact is worthy of note, if only to show how 
uncertain, even still, was the foundation of the throne of 
Brunswick, and how wide-spread the sympathy with the 
lost cause was supposed to be. When Bolingbroke was 
allowed to return to England, some of Swift's friends in- 
stantly fancied that he must have purchased his permis- 
sion by telling some tale against the dean himself, among 
others, and long after this time we find Swift defending 
himself against the rumored accusation of a share in 
Jacobite conspiracy. The condition of the public mind 
is well pictured in a description of two imaginary politi- 
cians in one of the successors to the Toiler. "Tom Tem- 
pest "is described as a steady friend to the House of 
Stuart. He can recount the prodigies that have appeared 
in tiie sky, and the calamities that have afflicted the 
nation every year from the Revolution, and is of opinion 
that if the exiled family had continued to reign, there 
would neither have been worms in our ships nor caterpil- 
lars in our trees. He firmly believes that King William 
burned Whitehall that he might steal the furniture, and 
that Tillotsou died an atheist. Of Queen Anne he speaks 
with more tenderness ; owns that she meant well, and can 
tell by whom she was poisoned. Tom has always some 
new promise that we shall see in another month the right- 
ful monarch on the throne. " Jack Sneaker," on the other 
hand, is a devoted adherent to the present establishment. 
He has known those who saw the bed in which the Pre- 
tender was conveyed in a warming -pan. He often re- 
joices that this nation was not enslaved by the Irish. He 
believes that King William never lost a battle, and that 
if he had lived one year longer he would have conquered 
France. Yet amid all this satisfaction he is hourly dis- 
turbed by dread of Popery ; wonders that stricter laws 
are not made against the Papists, and is sometimes afraid 
that they are busy with French gold among our bishops 
and judges. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

WALr-OLE IN POWER AS WELL AS OFFICE. 

Walpole was now Prime-minister. The King wished 
to reward him for his services by conferring a peerage on 
him, but tills honor Walpole steadily declined. One of 
his biographers says that his refusal "at first appears ex- 
traordinary." It ought not to appear extraordinary at 
first or at last. Walpole knew that the sceptre of gov- 
ernment in England had passed to the House of Com- 
mons. He would have been unwise and inconsistent in- 
deed if at his time of life he had consented to renounce 
the influence and the power which a seat in that House 
gave him for the comparative insignificance and obscurity 
of a seat in the House of Lords. He accepted a title for 
his eldest son, who was made Baron Walpole, but for 
himself he preferred to keep to the field in which he had 
won his name, and where he could make his influence and 
power felt all over the land. 

We may anticipate the course of events, and say at 
once that hardly ever before in the history of English 
political life, and hardly ever since Walpole's time, has 
a minister had so long a run of power. His long admin- 
istration, as Mr. Green well says, is almost without a his- 
tory. It is almost without a history, that is to say, in 
the ordinary sense of the word. For the most part, the 
steady movement of England's progress remains, during 
long years and years, undisturbed by any event of great 
dramatic interest at home or abroad. But the period of 
Walpole's long and successful administration was none 
the less a period of the highest importance in English 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



59 



history. It was a time of almost uninterrupted national 
development in the right direction, and almost unbroken 
national prosperity. The foreign policy of Walpole was, 
on the whole, no less sound and just than his policy at 
home. His first ambition was to keep England out of 
wars with foreign Powers. Yet his was not the ambition 
which some later statesmen, especially, for example, Mr. 
Bright, have owned — the ambition to keep England free 
of any foreign policy whatever. Such an ambition was 
not Walpole's, and such an ambition at Walpole's time 
it would have been all but impossible to realize. Wal- 
pole knew well that there was no way of keeping Eng- 
land out of foreign wars at that season of political growth 
but by securing for her a commanding influence in Con- 
tinental affairs. Such influence he set himself to estab- 
lish, and he succeeded in establishing it by friendly and 
satisfactory alliances with France and other Powers. 
Turning back for a moment into the political affairs of a 
year or two previous, we may remark that one of the 
consequences of the Mississippi scheme, and the reign of 
Mr. Law in France, had been the recall of Lord Stair 
from the French Court, to which he was accredited as 
English ambassador. Lord Stair quarrelled with Law 
when Law was all-powerful ; and in order to propitiate 
tlie financial dictator, it was found convenient to recall 
Stair from Paris. England had been well served by him 
as her ambassador at the French Court. We have al- 
ready said something of Lord Stair — his ability, courage, 
and dexterity, his winning ways, and his fearless spirit. 
John Dalrymple, second Earl of Stair, was one of the re- 
markable men of his time. He was a scholar and an ora- 
tor, a soldier and a diplomatist. He had fought with 
conspicuous bravery and skill under William the Third 
and under Marlborough. He appears to have combined 
a daring that looked like recklessness with a cool calcu- 
lation which made it prudence. On Marlborough's fall 
Lord Stair fell with him. He was deprived of all his 
public offices, and was plunged into a condition of some- 
thing like poverty. When George the First came to the 
throne, Stair was taken into favor again, and as a special 
tribute to his diplomatic capacity was sent to represent 
England at the Court of France. There he displayed 
consummate sagacity, foresight, and firmness. He con- 
trived to make himself acquainted beforehand with every- 
thing the Jacobites were doing. This, as may be seen 
by Bolingbroke's complaints, was easy enough at one 
time; but the adherents of James Stuart began after a 
while to learn prudence, and some of their enterprises 
were conducted up to a certain point with much craft 
ami caution. Lord Stair, however, always contrived to 
get the information he wanted. Some of the arts by 
\\ hich he accomplished his purposes were not, perhaps, 
such as a great diplomatist of our time would have cared 
to practise. He bribed with a liberal hand ; he kept per- 
sons of all kinds in his pay; he bribed French officials, 
and even French ministers ; he got to know all that was 
done in the most secret councils of the State. He used 
to go about the capital in disguise in order to find out 
what people were saying in the wine - shops and coffee- 
houses. Often, after he had entertained a brilliant com- 
pany of guests at a stale dinner, he would make some ex- 
cuse to his friends for quitting them abruptly ; say that 
he had received despatches which required his instant at- 
tention, leave the company to be entertained by his wife, 
withdraw to his study, there quietly change his clothes, 
and then wander out on one of his nightly visitations of 
taverns and coffee-houses, lie paid court to great ladies 
flattered them, allowed them to win money at cards from 
him, and even made love to them, for the sake of getting 
some political secrets out of them. He had a noble and 
stately presence, a handsome face, and charming manners. 
lie is said to have been the most polite and well-bred 
man of his time. It is of him the story is told about the 
test of good-breeding which the King of France applied 



and acknowledged. Louis the Fourteenth had heard it 
said that Stair was the best-bred man of his day. The 
King invited Stair to drive out with him. As they were 
about to enter the carriage the King signed to the Eng- 
lish ambassador to go first. Stair bowed and entered the 
carriage. " The world is right about Lord Stair," said 
the King ; " I never before saw a man who would not 
have troubled me with excuses and ceremony." 

The French Government naturally feared that the re- 
call of Lord Stair might be marked by a change in the 
friendly disposition of England. This fear became great- 
er on the death of Stanhope. The English Government, 
however, took steps to reassure the Regent of France. 
Townshend himself wrote at once to Cardinal Dubois, 
promising to maintain as before a cordial friendship with 
the French Government. Walpole was entirely imbued 
with the instincts of such a policy. The chief disturbing 
influence in Continental politics arose from the anxiety 
of Spain to recover Gibraltar and Minorca, and, in fact, to 
get back again all that had been taken from her by the 
Treaty of Utrecht. The territorial and other arrange- 
ments which concluded with the Treaty of Utrecht made 
themselves the central point of all the foreign policy of 
that time : these States were concerned to maintain the 
treaty; those were eager to break through its bonds. It 
holds in the politics of that day the place which was held 
by the Treaty of Vienna at a later period. There is al- 
ways much of the hypocritical about the manner in which 
treaties of that highly artificial nature are made. No 
State really intends to hold by them any longer than she 
finds that they serve her own interests. If they are im- 
posed upon a State and are injurious to her, that State 
never means to submit to them any longer than she is 
actually under compulsion. New means and impulses to 
break away from such bonds are given to those inclined 
that way, in the fact that the arrangements are usually 
made without the slightest concern for the populations 
of the countries concerned, but only for dynastic or other 
political considerations. The pride of the Spanish people 
was so much hurt by some of the conditions of the Treaty 
of Utrecht that a Spanish sovereign or minister would 
always be popular who could point to his people a way to 
escape from its bonds or to rend them in pieces. Spain, 
therefore, was always looking out for new alliances. She 
saw at one time a fresh chance for trying her policy, and 
she held out every inducement in her power to the Em- 
peror Charles the Sixth and to Russia to enter into a 
combination against France and England. The Emperor 
was without a son, and, in consequence, had issued his 
famous Pragmatic Sanction, providing that his hereditary 
dominions in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia should de- 
scend to his daughter Maria Theresa. The great Powers 
of Europe had not as yet seen fit to guarantee, or even 
recognize, this succession. Spain held out the temptation 
to the Emperor of her own guarantee to the Pragmatic 
Sanction, and of several important concessions in the mat- 
ter of trade and commerce to Austria, on consideration 
that the Emperor should assist Spain to recover her lost 
territory. Catherine, the wife of Peter the Great, was 
now governing Russia, and was entering into secret ne- 
gotiations with Spain and with the Emperor. Townshend 
and Walpole understood all that was going on, and suc- 
ceeded in making a defensive treaty between England, 
France, and Prussia. Prussia, to be sure, did not long 
hold to the treaty, and her withdrawal gave a new stim- 
ulus to the machinations of the Emperor and of Philip 
of Spain, and in 1727 Philip actually ventured to lay 
siege to Gibraltar. England, France, and Holland, how- 
ever, held firmly together ; the Russian Empress sudden- 
ly died, the Emperor Charles was not inclined to risk 
much, and Spain finally had to come to terms with Eng- 
land and her allies. 

These troubles might have proved serious but for the 
determined policy of Townshend and of Walpole. We 



60 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



have not thought it necessary to weary our readers with 
the details of this little running fire of dispute which was 
kepi up for some years between England and Spain. We 
saw in an earlier chapter how the quarrel began, and what 
the elements were which fed it and kept ii burning. This 
latter passage is really oidy a continuation of the former ; 
both, excepl for the sake of mere continuity of historic 
narrative, might have been told as one story, and, indeed, 
would perhaps not have required many sentences for the 
telling. Walpole applied himself at home to the work of 
what has since been called Peace, Retrenchment, and Re- 
form, lie was the first great English finance minister; 
perhaps we maj say he was the first English minister who 
ever sincerely regarded the development of national pros- 
perity, the ju t and equal distribution of taxation, and the 
lightening of the load of financial burdens, as the most 
important business of a statesman. The whole political 
and social conditions of the country were changing under 
bis wise and beneficent system of administration. Popu- 
lation was steadily increasing; some of the great rising 
towns had doubled their numbers since Walpole's career 
In gan. Agriculture was better in its systems, and was 
brightening the face of the country everywhere ; the farm- 
er had almost ceased for the time to grumble ; the labor- 
er was well fed and not too heavily worked. We do not 
mean to say that Walpole's administration was the one 
cause of all this improvement in town and country, but 
most assuredly the peace, and the security of peace, which 
Walpole's administration conferred was of direct and ma- 
terial influence in the growing prosperity of the nation. 
His financial systems lightened the burdens of taxation, dis- 
tributed the load more equally everywhere, and enabled the 
State to get the best revenue possible at the lowest cost 
and with the least effort. It might almost be said that 
Walpole anticipated free-trade. The Royal speech from 
the Throne at the opening of Parliament, on October 19, 
1721, declared it to be "very obvious that nothing would 
more conduce to the obtaining so public a good" — the ex- 
tension of our commerce — "than to make the exportation 
of our own manufactures, and the importation of the com- 
modities used in the manufacturing of them, as practi- 
cable and as easy as may be; by this means the balance 
of trade may be preserved in our favor, our navigation 
increased, and greater numbers of our poor employed." 
"I must, therefore," the speech went on, "recommend it 
to you, gentlemen of the House of Commons, to consider 
how far the duties upon these branches may be taken off 
and replaced, without am violation of public faith or lay- 
in;- any new burden upon my people ; and I promise 
ii: self that, by a due consideration of this matter, the 
produce of those duties, compared with the infinite ad- 
vantages that will accrue to the kingdom by their being 
taken off, will be found so inconsiderable as to leave little 
room for any difficulties or objections." In furtherance 
of the policy indicated in these passages of the Royal 
speech, more than one hundred articles of British manu- 
facture were allowed to be exported free id' duty, while 
some forty articles of raw material were allowed to be 
imported in the same manner. Walpole was anxious to 
make a full use of tins system of indirect taxation. He 
desired to levy and collect taxes in such a manner as to 
avoid the losses imposed upon the revenue by smuggling 
and by various forms of fraud. His principle was that 
the necessaries of life and the raw materials from which 
our manufactures were to he made ought to remain, a 
far as possible, free of taxation. The whole history of 
our financial systems since Walpole's time has been a his- 
tory of the gradual development of his economic princi- 
ples. There has been, of course, reaction now and then, 
and sometimes the counsi Is of statesmen appear for a while 
to have been under the absolute domination of the policy 
which he strove to supplant ; but the reaction has only 
In en for seasons, while the progress of Walpole's policy 
has been steady. We have now, in 1884, nearly accom- 



plished the financial task Walpole would, if 'he could, 
have accomplished a century and a half earlier. 

No one can deny that Walpole was an unscrupulous 
minister. He would gladly have carried out the best 
policy by the best means ; but where this was not prac- 
ticable or convenient be was perfectly willing to carry 
out a noble policy by the vilest methods. He was not 
himself avaricious; he was not open to the temptations 
of money. He had a fortune large enough for him, and 
he spent it freely, but he was willing to bribe and cor- 
rupt all those of whom he could make any use. Under 
his rule corruption became a settled Parliamentary sys- 
tem. He had done more than any other man to make 
the House of Commons the most powerful factor in the 
government of England ; he had therefore made a seat 
in the House of Commons an object of the highest ambi- 
tion. To sit in that House made the obscurest country 
gentleman a power in the State. Naturally, therefore, a 
seat in the House of Commons was struggled for, scram- 
bled for, fought for — obtained at any cost of money, in- 
fluence, time, and temper. Naturalh*, also, a seat thus 
obtained was a possession through which recompense of 
some kind was expected. Those who buy their seats nat- 
urally expect to sell their votes ; at least that was so in 
the days of Walpole. In times nearer to our own, Eng- 
land has seen a condition of things in which public opin- 
ion and the development of a sort of national conscience 
absolutely prevented members from taking bribes, al- 
though it allowed them the most liberal use of bribery 
and corruption in the obtaining of their seats. The mem- 
ber of Parliament who, twenty or thirty years ago, would 
have bought his seat by means of the most unblushing 
and shameless corruption, would no more have thought 
of selling his vote to a minister for a money payment 
than he would have thought of selling his wife at Smith- 
field. But in Walpole's time the man who bought his 
seat was ready to sell his vote. Walpole, the minister, 
was willing to buy the vote of any man who would sell it. 
He was lavish in the gift oflucrative offices, of rich sine- 
cures, of pensions, and even of bribes in a lump sum, 
money down. He would bribe a member's wife, if that 
were more convenient than openly to bribe the member 
himself. He had no particular choice as to whether the 
bribe should be direct or indirect, open or secret ; he 
wanted to get the vote, he was willing to pay the price, 
and he eared not who knew of the arrangement. We 
have already mentioned that the saying ascribed to him 
about every man having his price was never uttered by 
him. What he said probably was, that " each of these 
men," alluding to a certain group or party, had his price. 
He is reported to have said that he never knew any wom- 
an who would not take money, except one noble lady, 
whom he named, and she, he said, took diamonds. lie 
acted consistently and was not ashamed. He was incor- 
rupt himself; he was even in that sense incorruptible; 
but in order to gain his own public purposes, wise and 
just as they were, he was willing to corrupt a w hole House 
of Commons, and would not have shrunk from corrupting 
a nation. 

It ought to be pointed out that the very pacific nature 
of Walpole's policy and the security and steadiness of 
his administration made it sometimes all the more neces- 
sary for him to have recourse to questionable methods. 
<4iv;it controversies of imperial or national interest — con- 
troversies which stir the hearts of men, which appeal to 
their principles and awaken their passions — did not often 
arise during his long tenure of power. Agitations of 
this kind, whatever trouble and disturbance they may 
bring with them, have a purifying effect upon the po- 
litical atmosphere. Only a very ignoble creature is to 
be bribed out of his opinions when some interest is at 
stake, on which his heart, his training, and his associa- 
tions have already taught him to take sides. Walpole 
kept the nation out of such controversies for the most 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



ei 



part, and one result was that small political combina- 
tions of various kinds were free to form themselves 
around him, beneath him, and against him. The House 
of Commons sometimes threatened to dissolve itself into 
a number of little separate seel ions or factions, none of 
them representing any real principle or having more than 
a temporary attraction of cohesion. Walpole was again 
and again placed in the position of having to encounter 
some little faction of this kind by open exercise of 
power or by the process of corruption, and he usually 
found the latter Course more convenient and ready. 
Nor could such a man at any period of English history 
have remained long without more or less formidable 
rivals. Walpole himself must have known well enough 
that the death of men like Sunderland, or the death of 
any number of men, could not, so long- as England was 
herself, secure him for long an undisturbed political field, 
with no head raised against him. A country like this 
is never so barren of political intellect and courage as to 
admit of a long dictatorship in political life. 

"Walpole had already one rising rival in the person of 
Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl of Granville. John Car- 
teret was born April 22, 1000, and was only five years 
old when the death of his father, the first Lord Carteret, 
made him a member of the House of Lords. He dis- 
tinguished himself greatly at Oxford, and entered very 
early into public life. He was from the beginning a 
favorite of George the First, and by the influence of 
Stanhope was intrusted with various diplomatic missions 
of more or less importance. In 1721 he was actually ap- 
pointed ambassador to the Court of France. The death 
of Craggs, the Secretary of State, however, made a va- 
cancy in the administration, and the place was at once 
assigned to Carteret. Carteret was one of those men 
whose genius we have to believe in rather on the faith 
of contemporary judgment than by reason of any track 
of its own it has left behind. The unanimous opinion of 
all who knew him, and more especially of those who were 
commonly brought into contact with him, was that Car- 
teret possessed the rarest combination of statesmanlike 
and literary gifts. Probably no English public man ever 
exhibited in a higher degree the qualities that bring suc- 
cess in politics and the qualities that bring success in lit- 
erature. It seems strange to have to say this when one 
remembers a man like Bolingbroke and a man like Burke; 
but it is certain that neither Bolingbroke nor Burke could 
boasl of snch scholarship and accomplishments as those 
of Carteret. He was a profound classical scholar; he 
was a master of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Ger- 
man, and Swedish. His scientific knowledge was ex- 
traordinary for that time; he was a close student of the 
history of past and passing time; he was deeply inter- 
ested in constitutional law, and had a passion for Church 
history. He was a great parliamentary debater — some 
say lie was even a great orator. He was prompt and 
bold in his decisions; he was not afraid of any enter- 
prise; he was not depressed or abashed by failure; he 
could take fortune's buffets and rewards with equal 
thanks. Large brains ami small affections are, accord- 
ing to Mr. Disraeli, the essential qualities for success in 
public life. Carteret had large brains and small affec- 
tions; he had no friendships and no enmities. Like 
Fox, he was a bad hater, but, unlike Fox, he had not a 
heart to love. He was fond of books and of wine and 
of women ; In- was a great drinker of wine, even for 
those days of deep drink. Beneath all the apparent 
energy and daring of his character there lay a voluptu- 
ous love of ease and languor. lie was not a lazy man, 
but his inclination was always to be an indolent man. 
He leaped up to sudden political action when the call 
came, like Sardanapalus leaping up to the inevitable 
light ; but, like Sardanapalus, he would have been always 
glad to lie down again and loll in ease the moment the 
necessity for action had passed away. No doubt his dai- 



ly allowance of Burgundy — a very liberal and generous 
allowance — had a good deal to do with his tendency to 
indolence. Whatever the reason, it is certain that, with 
all his magnificent gifts and his splendid chances, he did 
nothing great, and has left no abiding mark in history. 
Every one who came near him seems to have regarded 
hi a i a master-spirit. Chesterfield said of him, " When 
he dies, the ablest head in England dies too, take it for all 
in all." Horace Walpole declares' him to be superior in 
one set of qualities to his father. Sir Robert Walpole, 
and in others to the great Lord Chatham. " Why did 
they send you here?" Swift said to Carteret, with rough 
good - humor, when Carteret came over to Dublin to be 
Lord - lieutenant of Ireland. "You are not fit for this 
place ; let them send us back our boobies." Carteret's 
fame has always seemed to us like the fame of Sheridan's 
Begum speech. Such poor records as we have of that 
speech seem hardly to hint at any extraordinary elo- 
quence ; yet the absolutely unanimous opinion of all 
that heard it — of all the orators and statesmen and critics 
of the time — was that, so great a speech had never before 
been spoken in Parliament. These men can hardly have 
been all wrong, one would think ; and yet, on the other 
hand, it is not easy to believe that those who made such 
record of the speech as we have can have purposely left 
out all the eloquence, the wit, and the argument. In like 
manner, readers of this day may perplex themselves about 
the fame of Carteret. All the men who knew him can 
hardly have been mistaken when they concurred in giv- 
ing him credit for surpassing genius ; and yet we find no 
evidence of that genius either in the literature or the po- 
litical history of England. 

Carteret had one great advantage over Walpole and 
over all his contemporaries in political life — he was able 
to speak German fluently ; he was able to talk for hours 
with the King in the King's own guttural tongue. The 
King clung to Carteret's companionship because of his 
German. While Walpole was trying to instil his policy 
and counsels into George's mind through the non-con- 
ducting medium of very bad Latin, while other ministers 
were endeavoring to approach the Royal intelligence by 
means of French, which they spoke badly and he under- 
stood imperfectly, Carteret could rattle away in idiomatic 
German, and could amuse the Royal humor even with 
voluble German slang. Carteret had come into public 
life under the influence of Lord Sunderland and Lord 
Stanhope, and he regarded himself as the successor to 
their policy. He never considered himself as quite in 
understanding and harmony with Townshend and Wal- 
pole. His principal idea was that the time had passed 
when it was proper or expedient to exclude the Tories 
or the High-churchmen from the political service of the 
Crown. He desired to enlarge the basis of administra- 
tion by admitting some of the more plastic and progres- 
sive of the Tories to. a share in it. There was, however, 
something more than a conflict of political views between 
Carteret and Walpole. Wal pole's ambition was to be 
the constitution dictator of England. We do not say 
that this was a mere personal ambition ; on the contrary, 
we believe Walpole acted on the honest conviction that 
he knew better than any other man how England ought 
to be governed. He was sure, and reasonably sure, that 
no other statesman could play the game so well; he 
therefore claimed the right to play it. Carteret, on the 
other hand, was far too strong a man to be quietly pushed 
into the background. He was determined that if he re- 
mained in the service of the State he would be a states- 
man, and not a clerk. 

Therefore, while Carteret and Walpole were colleagues 
there was always a struggle going on between them, and, 
like all the political struggles of the time, it had a great 
deal of underhand influence, and the worst kind of petti- 
coat influence, engaged in it. One of the King's mis- 
tresses — the most influential of them — gave all her sup- 



62 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



port to Walpole; another Royal paramour lent her aid 
to Carteret's side. Carteret played into the King's hands 
as regarded the Hanoverian policy, and was for taking 
strong measures against Russia. Townshend and Wal- 
pole would hear of no schemes which threatened to en- 
tangle England in war for the sake of Hanoverian inter- 
ests. George liked Carteret, and was captivated by his 
policy as well as by his personal qualities, but he could 
not help seeing that Townshend's advice was the sounder, 
and that no man could manage the finances like Walpole. 
George went to Hanover in the summer of 1723, and both 
the Secretaries of State went with him. This was some- 
thing unusual, and even unprecedented ; but the King 
would not do without the companionship of Carteret, and 
knew that he could not do without the advice of Towns- 
hend. So both Townshend and Carteret went with his 
Majesty to Herrenhausen, and Walpole had the whole 
business of administration in his own hands at home. 

A very paltry and pitiful intrigue at length settled the 
question between Townshend and Carteret. A marriage 
had been arranged between a niece, or so-called niece, of 
one of George's mistresses and the son of La Vrilliere, 
the French Secretary of State. Madame La Vrilliere in- 
sisted, as a condition of the marriage, that her husband 
should be made a duke, and it was assumed that this 
could be brought about by the influence of the English 
Government. King George was anxious that the mar- 
riage should take place, and Carteret, of course, was will- 
ing to assist him. The English ambassador at the Court 
of France was a man named Sir Luke Schaub, by birth a 
Swiss, who had been Stanhope's secretary, and by Stan- 
hope's influence was pushed up in the diplomatic service. 
Sir Luke Schaub was in close understanding with Car- 
teret, and was strongly hostile to Townshend and Wal- 
pole. Of this fact Townshend was well aware, and he 
took care that Schaub should be closely watched in Paris. 
Schaub was instructed by Carteret, to do all he could in 
order to obtain the dukedom for Madame La Vrilliere's 
husband. Cardinal Dubois died, and his place in the 
councils of the Duke of Orleans was taken by Count 
Noce, who was believed to be hostile to England. This 
fact gave Townshend an excuse for suggesting to the 
King that some one should be sent to Paris to watch 
over the action of the French Governtnent and the con- 
duct of the English ambassador, "in such a manner," so 
Townshend wrote from Hanover to Walpole, "as may 
neither hurt Sir Luke Schaub's credit with the Duke of 
Orleans, nor create a jealousy in Sir Luke of the King's 
intending to withdraw his confidence from him." This 
was, of course, exactly what Townshend wanted to do — 
to induce the King to withdraw his confidence from poor 
Sir Luke. The King agreed that it was necessary some 
one " in whose fidelity and dexterity he can depend " 
should set out from England to Hanover, " and take 
Paris on his way hither, under pretence of a curiosity to 
see that place, and without owning to any one living the 
business he is employed in." The person selected for 
this somewhat delicate mission was Horace Walpole, Rob- 
ert Walpole's only surviving brother. 

Horace Walpole acquitted himself very cleverly of the 
task assigned to him. He was a man of uncouth man- 
ners, but of some shrewd ability and of varied experience. 
He had been a soldier with Stanhope before acting as 
Under-Secretary of State to Townshend ; he had man- 
aged to distinguish himself in Parliament and in diplo- 
macy. He soon contrived to obtain the ear of the Duke 
of Orleans, and he found that Sir Luke Schaub had been 
deceiving himself and his sovereign about the prospect 
of La Vrilliere's dukedom. Philip of Orleans told Hor- 
ace Walpole frankly that there never was the slightest 
idea of giving such a dukedom, and added that the dig- 
nity of France would be compromised if such a conces- 
sion were made in order to enable the King of England 
"to marry his bastard daughter" — so the Duke put it— 



into the French noblesse. Sir Luke Schaub's haste and 
indiscreet zeal had, in fact, brought his sovereign into 
discredit, and even compromised the good understanding 
between England and France. 

Philip of Orleans died almost immediately. His death 
was sudden, but he had long run a course which set all 
laws of health at defiance. He stuck to his pleasures to 
the very last — died, one might say, in harness. His suc- 
cessor in the administration of France, under the young 
King Louis the Fifteenth, who had just been declared of 
age, was the Duke de Bourbon, Philip's equal, perhaps, in 
profligacy, but not by any means his equal in capacity. 
Horace Walpole won over the new administrator. The 
Duke de Bourbon told him that Sir Luke Schaub was 
obnoxious to every one in the French Court, and that he 
was not fit, by birth, breeding, or capacity, to represent 
England there. 

We need not follow the intrigue through all its turns 
and twists. Walpole and Townshend succeeded. Schaub 
was recalled; Horace Walpole was appointed ambassador 
in his place. The r,ecall of Schaub involved the fall of 
Carteret. Carteret, however, was not a man to be rudely 
thrust out of office, and a soft fall was therefore prepared 
for him ; he was made Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. He 
knew that he was defeated. Then, as at a later day and 
at an earlier, the Viceroyalty of Ireland was the gilding 
which enabled a man to gulp down the bitter pill of po- 
litical failure. When Lord John Russell obtained the 
dismissal of Lord Palmerston from his cabinet in 1851, 
he endeavored, somewhat awkwardly, to soften the blow 
by offering to his dispossessed rival the position of Lord- 
lieutenant of Ireland. Lord Palmerston understood the 
meaning of the offer, and treated it — as was but nat- 
ural — with open contempt. Carteret acted otherwise. 
Probably he felt within himself that he was not destined 
to a great political career. In any case, he accepted the 
offer with perf ect good - humor, declaring that, on the 
whole, he thought he should be much more pleasantly 
situated as a dictator in Dublin than as the servant of a 
dictator in London. 

CHAPTER XV. 

TUE DEAPIEe's LETTEES. 

Loed Caeteeet arrived at the seat of his Viceroyalty 
in the midst of a political storm which threatened at one 
time to blow down a good many shaky institutions. He 
found the whole country, and especially the capital, con- 
vulsed by an agitation the like of which was not seen 
again until the days of Grattan and the Volunteers. 
The hero of the agitation was Swift; the spell - words 
which gave it life and direction were found in " The 
Drapier's Letters." 

The copper coinage of Ireland had been for a long time 
deficient. Employers of labor had in many cases been 
obliged to pay their workmen in tokens; sometimes even 
with pieces of card, stamped and signed, and represent- 
ing each a small amount. During Sunderland's time of 
power the Government set themselves to work to supply 
the lack of copper, and invited tenders from the owners 
of mines for the supply. A Mr. William Wood, a man 
who owned iron and copper mines, and iron and copper 
works, sent in a t ender which was accepted. A patent 
was given to Wood permitting him to coin halfpence 
and farthings to the value of one hundred and eight 
thousand pounds. Walpole had not approved of the 
scheme himself, but for various reasons he did not vent- 
ure to upset it. He had the patent prepared, and con- 
sulted Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint, with 
regard to the objects which the Government had in view, 
and the weight and fineness of the coin which Wood was 
to supply. The halfpence and farthings were to be a 
little less in weight than the coin of the same kind cur- 
rent in England. Walpole considered this necessary be- 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



63 



cause of the difference in exchange between the two coun- 
tries. Sir Isaac Newton was of opinion that the Irish 
coin exceeded the English in fineness of metal. As to 
the King's prerogative for granting such patents, Walpole 
himself explained in a letter to Lord Townshcnd, then in 
Hanover with the King, that it was one never disputed 
and often exercised. The granting of this patent, and 
the mode of supplying the deficiency in copper coin, 
might seem little open to objection; but the Irish Privy 
Council at once declared against the whole transaction. 
Both Houses of the Irish Parliament passed addresses to 
the King, declaring that the introduction of Wood's coin- 
age would lie injurious to the revenue and positively de- 
structive of trade. The Irish Lord Chancellor set himself 
sternly against the patent in private, and urged all his 
friends, comrades, and dependents, to act publicly against 
it. The addresses from the two Houses of Parliament 
were sent to Walpole, who transmitted them to Lord 
Townshend. Walpole accompanied the addresses with 
an explanation in which he vindicated the policy repre- 
sented by the granting of the patent, and insisted that 
no harm whatever could be done to the trade or revenue 
of Ireland by the introduction of the new copper coinage. 
Walpole advised that the King should return a soothing 
and a conciliatory reply to the addresses, and the King 
acted accordingly. It seemed at one time probable that 
a satisfactory compromise would be arranged between 
the Irish Parliament and King George's ministers. This 
hope, however, was soon dispelled. 

One objection felt by the Irish people in general to the 
patent and the new coinage was founded on the discov- 
ery of the fact that Wood had agreed to pay a large 
bribe to the Duchess of Kendal for her influence in ob- 
taining the patent for him. The objection of the Irish 
Executive and the Irish Parliament was mainly based on 
the fact that Dublin had not been consulted in the ar- 
rangement of the business. The ministers in London set- 
tled the whole affair, and then simply communicated the 
nature of the arrangement to Dublin. Wood himself 
was unpopular, so far as anything could be known of 
him, in Ireland. He was a stranger to Ireland, and he 
was represented to be a boastful, arrogant man, who went 
about saying he could do anything he liked with Wal- 
pole, and that he would cram his copper coins down the 
throats of the Irish people. All these objections, how- 
ever, might have been got over but for the sudden ap- 
pearance of an unexpected and a powerful actor on the 
scene. One morning appeared in Dublin " A letter to the 
shopkeepers, tradesmen, farmers, and common people of 
Ireland, concerning the brass halfpence coined by one 
William Wood, hardwareman, with a design to have 
them pass in this kingdom ; wherein is shown the power 
of his patent, the value of his halfpence, and how far ev- 
ery person may lie obliged to take the same in payments ; 
and how to behave himself in case such an attempt should 
be made by Wood or any other person." The letter was 
signed "M. B., Drapier." This was the first of those 
famous " Drapier' s Letters" which convulsed Ireland with 
a passion like that preceding a great popular insurrection. 
It may be questioned whether the pamphlets of a literary 
politician ever before or since worked with so powerful 
an influence on the mind of a nation as these marvellous 
letters. 

The author of "The Drapier's Letters," we need hard- 
ly say, was Dean Swift. Swift had for some years with- 
drawn himself from the political world. He is described 
by one of his biographers as having " amused himself for 
three or four years with poetry, conversation, and trifles." 
Now and then, however, he published some letter which 
showed his interest in the condition of the people among 
whom he lived; his proposal, for example, "for the uni- 
versal use of Irish manufacture in clothes, and furniture 
of houses, etc.," was written in the year 1720. This let- 
ter — the printer of which was subjected to a Government 



prosecution — contains a passage which has been, perhaps, 
more often and more persistently misquoted than any oth- 
er observation of any author we can now remember. It 
seems to have become an article of faith with many writ- 
ers and most readers that Swift said, " Burn everything 
that comes from England, except its coals." Without 
much hope of correcting that false impression so far as 
the bulk of the reading and quoting public is concerned, 
we may observe that Swift never said anything of the 
kind. This is what he did say: "I heard the late Arch- 
bishop of Tuam mention a pleasant observation of some- 
body's that ' Ireland would never be happy until a law 
were made for burning everything that came from Eng- 
land, except their people and their coals.' I must con- 
fess that, as to the former, I should not be sorry if they 
would stay at home, and, for the latter, I hope in a little 
time we shall have no occasion for them." Swift was 
not an Irish patriot ; he was not, indeed, an Irishman at 
all, except by the accident of birth, and now by the acci- 
dent of residence. He did not love the country ; he 
would not have lived there a week if he could. He had 
no affection for the people, and, at first, very little sym- 
pathy with them. He was always angry if anybody re- 
garded him as an Irishman. His friends were all found 
among what may be described as the English and Protes- 
tant colony in Ireland. He felt towards the native Irish 
— the Irish Catholics — very much as the official of an 
English Government might feel towards some savage 
tribe whom he had been sent out to govern. But at the 
same time it is an entire mistake to represent Swift as in- 
sincere in the efforts which he made to ameliorate the 
condition of the Irish people, and to redress some of the 
gross wrongs which he saw inflicted on them. The ad- 
ministrator of whom we have already spoken might have 
gone out to the savage country with nothing but con- 
tempt for its wild natives, but if he were at all a humane 
and a just man, it would be natural for him as time went 
on to feel keenly if any injustice were inflicted on the 
poor creatures whom he despised, and at last to stand up 
with indignation as their defender and their champion. 
So it was with Swift. Little as he liked the Irish people 
in the beginning, yet he had a temper and a spirit which 
made him intolerant of injustice and oppression. That 
fierce indignation described by himself, and of which 
such store was always laid up in his heart, was roused to 
its highest point of heat by the sight of the miseries of 
the Irish people and of the frequent acts of neglect and 
injustice by which their misery was deepened. He felt 
the most sincere resentment at the arbitrary manner in 
which the Government in London were dealing with Ire- 
land in the matter of W T ood's patent and Wood's copper 
coin. Swift, of course, knew well by what influence the 
patent had been obtained, and he knew that when ob- 
tained it had been simply thrust upon the Irish authori- 
ties, Parliament, and people without any previous sanction 
or knowledge on their part. Very likely he was also con- 
vinced, or had convinced himself, that the patent and the 
new coin would be injurious to the revenues and the trade 
of the country. Certainly, if he was not convinced of 
this, he gave to all his diatribes against Wood, Wood's 
patent, and Wood's halfpence the tones of profoundest 
conviction. He assumed the character of a draper for 
the moment — why he chose to spell draper "drapier" 
nobody knew — and he certainly succeeded in putting on 
all the semblance of an honest trader driven to homely 
and robust indignation by an impudent proposal to injure 
the business of himself and his neighbors. In England, 
he says, " the halfpence and farthings pass for very little 
more than they are worth, and if you should beat them 
to pieces and sell them to the brazier, you would not lose 
much above a penny in a shilling." But he goes on to 
say that Mr. Wood, whom he describes as " a mean, or- 
dinary man, a hardware dealer " — Wood was, as we have 
already seen, a large owner of iron and copper mines and 



64 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



works, but that was all one to Dean Swift— " made his 
halfpence of such base metal, and so much smaller than 
the English ones, that the brazier would hardly give you 
above a penny of good money for a shilling of his; so 
that this sum of one hundred and eight thousand pounds 
in good gold and silver may be given for trash that will 
not be worth above eight or nine thousand pounds real 
value." Nor is even this the worst, he contends, " for 
Mr. Wood, when he pleases, may by stealth send over 
another hundred and eight thousand pounds and buy all 
our goods for eleven parts in twelve under the value." 
" For example," says Swift, "if a hatter sells a dozen of 
hats for five shillings apiece, which amounts to three 
pounds, and receives the payment in Wood's coin, he 
really receives only the value of five shillings." Of 
course lliis is the wildest exaggeration — is, in fact, mere 
extravagance and absurdity, if regarded as a financial prop- 
osition. But Swift understood, as hardly any other man 
understood, the art of employing exaggeration with such 
an effect as to make it do the business of unquestionable 
fact. He was able to make his literary coins pass for 
much more than Wood could do with his halfpence and 
farthings. The artistic skill which bade the creatures 
whom Gulliver saw in his travels seem real, life-like, and 
living, made the fantastic extravagance of the "Drapier's 
Letters" strike home with all the force of truth to the 
minds of an excited populace. 

Many biographers and historians have expressed a blank 
and utter amazement at the effect which Swift's letters 
produced. They have chosen to regard it as a mere his- 
torical curiosity, a sort of political paradox and puzzle. 
They have described the Irish people at the time as under 
the spell of something like sorcery. Even in our own 
days, Mr. Gladstone, in a speech delivered to the House 
of Commons, treated the convulsion caused by Swift's 
letters and Wood's halfpence as an outbreak of national 
frenzy, called up by the witchery of style displayed in 
the " Drapier's Letters." To some of us it is, on the other 
hand, a matter of surprise to see how capable writers, and 
especially how a man of Mr. Gladstone's genius and polit- 
ical knowledge, could for a moment be thus deceived. 
One is almost inclined to think that Mr. Gladstone could 
not have been reading the "Drapier's Letters" recently, 
when he thus spoke of the effect which they produced, 
and thus was willing to explain it. Any one who reads 
the letters with impartial attention will see that from 
first to last the anger that burns in them, the sarcasm 
that withers and scorches, the passionate eloquence which 
glows in even their most carefully measured sentences, 
are directed against Wood and his halfpence only because 
the patent, the bribe by which it was purchased, and the 
manner in which it was forced on Ireland, represented 
the injustice of the whole system of Irish administration, 
and the wrongs of many generations. "It would be very 
hard if all Ireland," Swift declares with indignation, 
"should be put into one scale, and this sorry fellow 
Wood into the other." "I have a pretty good shop of 
Irish stuffs and silks," the Drapier declares, "and instead 
of taking Mr. Wood's bad copper, I intend to truck with 
my neighbors, the butchers and bakers and brewers, and 
the rest, goods for goods; and the little gold and silver I 
have, 1 will keep by me like my heart's blood till better 
times, or until I am just ready to starve." "Wood's con- 
tract V" he asks. "His contract with whom? Was it 
with the Parliament or people of Ireland?" The read- 
er who believes that such a passage as that, and scores 
of similar passages, were inspired merely by disapproval 
of the introduction of one hundred and eight thousand 
pounds in copper coin, must have very little understand- 
ing of Swift's temper or Swift's purpose, or the condition 
of tlu' times in which Swift lived. "I will shoot Mr. 
Wood and his deputies through the head, like highway- 
men or house-breakers, if they dare to force one farthing 
of beir coin on me in the payment of a hundred pounds. 



It is no loss of honor to submit to the lion, but who in 
the figure of a man can think with patience of being de- 
voured alive by a rat?". . . "If the famous Mr. Hampden 
rather chose to go to prison than pay a few shillings to 
King Charles I., without authority of Parliament, I will 
rather choose to be hanged than have all my substance 
taxed at seventeen shillings in the pound, at the arbitra- 
ry will and pleasure of the venerable Mr. Wood." Mr. 
Gladstone, perhaps, did not observe this allusion to "the 
famous Mr. Hampden." If he had done so, he would 
have better understood the inspiration of the "Drapier's 
Letters." Mr. Hampden was not so ignorant a man as 
to believe that the mere collection of the ship-money — 
the mere withdrawal of so much money from the pockets 
of certain tax -payers — would really ruin the trade and 
imperil the national existence of England. What Mr. 
Hampden objected to, and would have resisted to the 
death, was the unconstitutional and despotic system 
which the levy of the ship-money represented. The 
American colonists did not rise in rebellion against the 
Government of George III. merely because they had eat- 
en of the insane root, and fancied that a trifling tax upon 
tea would destroy the trade of Boston and New York. 
They rose in arms against the principle represented 
by the imposition of the tax. We can all understand 
why there should have been a national rebellion against 
ship-money, and a national rebellion against a trumpery 
duty on tea, but English writers and English public men 
seem quite unable to explain the national outcry against 
Wood's patent, except on the theory that a clever writer, 
pouring forth captivating nonsense, bewitched the Irish 
Parliament and the Irish people, and sent them out of 
their senses for a season. 

Swift followed up his first letter by others in rapid 
succession. Lord Carteret arrived in Ireland when the 
agitation was at its height. He issued a proclamation 
against the " Drapier's Letters," offered a reward of three 
hundred pounds for the discovery of the author, and had 
the printer arrested. Tlie Grand Jury, however, unani- 
mously threw out the bill sent up against Harding, the 
printer. Another Grand Jury passed a presentment 
against all persons who should by fraud or otherwise im- 
pose Wood's copper coins upon the public. This present- 
ment is said to have been drawn up by Swift's own hand. 
Lord Carteret at last had the good-sense to perceive, and 
the spirit to acknowledge, that there was no alternative 
between concession and rebellion. He strongly urged 
his convictions on the Government, and the Government 
had the wisdom to yield. The patent was withdrawn, a 
pension was given to Wood in consideration of the loss 
he had sustained, and Swift was the object of universal 
gratitude, enthusiasm, love, and devotion, on the part of 
the Irish nation. Many a patriotic Irishman would fain 
believe to this very day that Swift, too, was Irish, and an 
Irish patriot. Ireland certainly has not yet forgotten, 
probably never will forget, the successful stand made by 
Swift against what he believed to be an insult to the 
Irish nation, when he took up his pen to write the first 
of the Drapier's immortal Letters. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE OPPOSITION'. 

The trouble had hardly been got rid of in Ireland by 
Carteret's judicious advice and the withdrawal of Wood's 
patent when a commotion that at one time threatened to 
be equally serious broke out in Scotland. English mem- 
bers of Parliament had been for many years complaining 
that Scotland was exempt from any taxation on malt. 
I'p to that time no Government had attempted to take 
any steps towards establishing equality in this respect be- 
tween the two countries. Walpole now strove to deal 
with the question. It was proposed in the House of 
Commons that instead of a malt duty in Scotland a duty 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



05 



of sixpence should be levied on every barrel of ale. Wal- 
pole at first was not inclined to deal with the difficulty 
in this way, but as the feeling of the House was very 
strongly in favor of making some attempt, he consented 
to adopt the principle suggested, but required that the 
duty should be threepence instead of sixpence. The mo- 
ment, it became known in Scotland that any tax on malt 
or ale was to be imposed, rioting began in the principal 
cities ; the spirit of the national motto asserted itself — 
"nemo me impune laeessit." The ringleaders of various 
mobs were arrested and sent for trial, but the Scotch 
juries, following the recent example of the Irish, refused 
to convict. Brewers all over Scotland entered into a 
sort of league, by virtue of which they pledged them- 
selves not to give any securities for the new duty and 
to cease brewing if the Government exacted it. Unluck- 
ily for Walpole, the Secretary of State for Scotland, 
the Duke of Roxburgh, was a great friend of Carteret's, 
and had joined with Carteret in endeavoring to thwart 
Walpole in all his undertakings. The success of Wal- 
pole's policy in any instance was understood by Carteret 
and by Roxburgh to mean Walpole's supremacy over all 
other ministers. The Duke of Roxburgh therefore took 
advantage of the crisis in Scotland to injure the admin- 
istration, and especially to injure Walpole. In a subtle 
and underhand way he contrived to favor and foment 
the disturbance. He took care that the orders of the 
Government should not be too quickly carried out, and 
he gave more than a tacit encouragement to the common 
rumor that the King in his heart was hostile to the new 
tax, that the tax was wholly an invention of Walpole's, 
and that resistance to such a measure would not be un- 
welcome to the Sovereign, and would lead to the dismis- 
sal of the minister. Walpole was not long in finding out 
the treachery of the Duke of Roxburgh. To adopt a 
homely phrase, he "took the bull by the horns " at once. 
Lord Townshend was in Hanover with the King, and 
Walpole wrote to Lord Townshend, giving him a full 
account of all that was going on in Scotland, and laying 
the chief blame for the continuance of the disturbance on 
the Duke of Roxburgh. "I beg leave to observe," wrote 
Walpole, "that the present administration is the first that 
was ever yet known to be answerable for the whole Gov- 
ernment, with a Secretary of State for one part of the 
kingdom who, they are assured, acts counter to all their 
measures, or at least whom they cannot confide in." His 
remonstrance had to be pressed again and again upon 
Townshend before anything was done to satisfy him. 
Walpole, however, was a man to press where he thought 
the occasion demanded it, and he was successful in the 
end. The Duke of Roxburgh had to resign, and Wal- 
pole added to his own duties those of the Secretary of 
State for Scotland, He appointed, however, as his agent 
or deputy in the administration of Scotland, the Earl of 
Isla, Lord-keeper of the Privy Seal in that country, and a 
man on whose allegiance he could entirely rely. Having 
thus secured a full power to act, Walpole was not long in 
bringing the disturbances to an end. He displayed both 
discretion and resolve. He was able to satisfy the most 
reasonable among the brewers and maltsters that their 
interests would not really sutler by the proposed resolu- 
tions. The natural result was that the combination of 
brewers began to melt away. The brewers held a meet- 
ing, and it was soon found that it would not be possible 
to secure a general resolution to meet the legislation of 
the Government by passive resistance and by ceasing to 
brew. As all would not stand together, every man was 
left to take his own course, and the result was that what 
we should now call a strike came quietly to an end. 

A modern reader is naturally shocked and surprised at 
the manner in which members of the same Government 
in Walpole's day intrigued against one another, and strove 
to thwart each other's policy. No actual defence is to be 
made for such a practice ; but it is oidy fair to observe 



that up to Walpole's own entrance into office, and after 
it, the habit of English sovereigns had been to make up 
an administration by taking members of different and 
even of opposing parties ami bringing them together, in 
the hope of securing thereby the co-operation of all par- 
ties. Under these circumstances it was natural, it was 
only to be expected, that the minister who was pledged 
to one policy would endeavor by all means in his power 
to counteract the designs of the minister whom he knew 
to be pledged to a very different kind of policy. Nor, 
indeed, is the practice of intrigue and counter -intrigue 
among members of the same cabinet actually unknown 
in our own days, when there is not the same excuse to 
be pleaded for it that might have been urged in the 
time of Walpole. In the case of the Duke of Rox- 
burgh, however, the attempt to counteract the policy of 
Walpole was made in somewhat bolder and less subtle 
fashion than was common even in those days, and Wal- 
pole was well justified in the course he took. For once 
his high-handed way of dealing with men was vindicated 
by its principle and by the unqualified advantage it 
brought to the interests of the State and to those of 
the minister as well. 1 

The student of history derives one satisfaction from 
the frequent visits of King George to Hanover. The 
correspondence between Walpole and Townshend which 
was made necessary by those visits gives us many an in- 
teresting glimpse into political affairs in their reality, in 
their undress, in their secret movement, which no ordi- 
nary State papers or diplomatic despatches could be 
trusted to give. The Secretary of State often communi- 
cates to the representative of his country at some foreign 
court only just that view of a political situation which 
he wishes to put under the eyes of the foreign sovereign 
and foreign statesmen. But Walpole writes to Towns- 
hend exactly what he himself believes, and what it is 
important both to Townshend and to him that Towns- 
hend shall fully know. " I think," Walpole says to 
Townshend in one of his letters, " we have once more 
got Ireland and Scotland quiet, if we take care to keep 
them so." Exactly; if only care be taken to keep them 
so. The same chance had often been given to English 
statesmen before; Ireland and Scotland quiet, and might 
have continued in quietness if care had only been taken 
to keep them so. 

The King was much pleased with Walpole's success. 
He made him one of the thirty- eight Knights of the 
Bath. The Order of the Bath had gone out of use, out 
of existence in fact, since the coronation of Charles the 
Second; George the First revived it in 1725, and be- 
stowed its honors on Walpole. It seems an odd sort of 
reward for the shrewd, practical, and somewhat coarse- 
fibred squire -statesman. The close connection between 
man and the child, civilized man and the savage, is never 
more clearly illustrated than in the joy and pride which 
the wisest statesman feels in the wearing of a ribbon or 
a star. Iu the next year the King made Walpole a Knight 
of the Garter ; after this honor all other mark of dignity 
would be but an anti-climax. From the time of his in- 
troduction to the Order of the Bath, the great minister 
ceased to be plain Mr. Walpole, and became Sir Robert 
Walpole. 

Meanwhile, under Walpole's Order of the Bath, many 
a throb of pain must have made itself felt. The minister 
began to find himself harassed by the most formidable 
opposition that had ever set itself against him. Lord 
Carteret was out of the way for the moment — and only 
for the moment ; but Pulteney proved a much more per- 
tinacious, ingenious, and dangerous enemy than Carteret 
had hitherto been. Pulteney was at one time the faithful 
follower, the enthusiastic admirer, almost the devotee, of 
Walpole. The one great political defect of Walpole filled 
him with faults. He could not bear the idea of a divided 
rule; he would be all or nothing; he would have clerks 



66 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



and servants for his colleagues in office ; not real minis- 
ters, actual statesmen. He was under the mistaken im- 
pression that a man of genius is to be reduced to tame 
insignificance by merely keeping him out of important 
office. He had made this mistake with regard to Car- 
teret ; he made it now with regard to Pulteney. The 
consequences were far more serious ; for Pulteney was 
neither so good-humored nor so indolent as Carteret, and 
he could not be put aside. 

Pulteney was a man of singular eloquence, and of elo- 
quence peculiarly adapted to the House of Commons. 
His style was brilliant, incisive, and penetrating. He 
could speak on any subject at the spur of the moment. 
He never delivered a set speech. He was a born parlia- 
mentary debater. All his resources seemed to be at in- 
stant command, according as he had need of them. His 
reading was wide, deep, and varied ; he was a most ac- 
complished classical scholar, and had a marvellous readi- 
ness and aptitude for classical allusion. He was a wit 
and a humorist ; he could brighten the dullest topics and 
make them sparkle by odd and droll illustrations, as well 
as by picturesque allusions and eloquent phrases. Pie 
could, when the subject called for it, break suddenly into 
thrilling invective. But he had some of the defects of 
the extemporaneous orator. His eloquence, his wit, his 
epigrams often carried him away from his better judg- 
ment. He frequently committed himself to some opinion 
which was not really his, and was led far from his proper 
position in the pursuit of some paradox or by the charm 
of some fantastic idea. He was a brilliant writer as well 
as a brilliant speaker. His private character would have 
little blame if it were not that a fondness for money kept 
growing with his growing years. " For a good old-gen- 
tlemanly vice," says Byron, " I think I must take up with 
avarice." Pulteney did not even wait to be an old gen- 
tleman to take up with " the good old-gentlemanly vice." 
We have in some measure now to take his talents on trust, 
as we have those of Carteret. He proved to be little 
more than the comet of a season ; when he had gone, he 
left no line of light behind him. But it is certain that in 
the estimation of his contemporaries he was one of the 
most gifted men of his time ; and for a while he was the 
most popular man in England — the darling and the hero 
of the multitude. When Walpole was sent to the Tower 
in the late Queen's reign, Pulteney had spoken up man- 
fully for his friend. When Townshend and Walpole 
resigned office in 1717, Pulteney went resolutely with 
them and resigned office also. The time came when Wal- 
pole found himself triumphant over all his enemies, and 
came back not merely to office but likewise to power. 
Naturally, Pulteney expected that Walpole would invite 
him to fill some place of importance in the new adminis- 
tration. Walpole did nothing of the kind. He had seen 
ample evidence of Pulteney's great parliamentary talents 
in the mean time, and he feared that with Pulteney for 
an official colleague he could never be a dictator. He 
was anxious, however, not to offend Pulteney, and he 
had the curious weakness to imagine that he could con- 
ciliate Pulteney by offering him a peerage. Even at that 
time, when the sceptre of popular power had not yet 
passed altogether into the hands of the representative 
chamber, it was absurd to suppose that Pulteney would 
consent to be withdrawn from the House in which he had 
made his fame, which was his natural and fitting place, 
and which already was seen by every man of sense to be 
the central force of England's political life. Pulteney 
contemptuously refused the peerage. From that hour his 
old love for Walpole seems to have turned into hate. 

The explosion, however, did not come at once. Pul- 
teney continued to be on seemingly good terms with Wal- 
pole, and shortly afterwards the comparatively humble 
post of Cofferer to the Household was offered to him — 
some say was asked for by him. It does not seem likely 
that even then he had any intention of a serious recon- 



ciliation with Walpole. Perhaps he accepted this post in 
the expectation that he would shortly be raised to a much 
higher position in the State. But Walpole, although will- 
ing enough to give him any mark or place of honor on 
condition that he withdrew to the House of Lords, was 
afraid to allow him any office of influence while he re- 
mained in the Commons. However this may be, Pul- 
teney's ambition was not satisfied, and he very soon broke 
publicly away from Walpole altogether. When a motion 
was brought on in April, 1725, for discharging the debts 
of the Civil List, in reply to a message from the King 
himself, Pulteney demanded an inquiry into the manner 
in which the money had been spent, and even made a 
fierce attack on the whole administration, and accused it 
of something very like downright corruption. He was 
dismissed from his office as Cofferer, and, even making 
allowance for his love of money, the wonder is that he 
should have held it long enough to be dismissed from it. 
He then went avowedly over into the ranks of the enemies 
of Walpole inside and outside the House of Commons. 

The position taken by Pulteney is chiefly interesting to 
us now in the fact that it opened a distinctly new chapter 
in English politics. Pulteney created the part of what 
has ever since been called the Leader of Opposition. 
With him begins the time when the real Leader of Op- 
position must have a place in the House of Commons ; 
with him, too, begins the time when the Opposition has 
for its recognized duty not merely to watch with jealous 
care all the acts of the ministers in order to prevent them 
from doing anything wrong, but also to watch for every 
opportunity of turning them out of office. With Pulteney 
and his tactics began the party organization which, inside 
the House of Commons and outside, works unceasingly 
with tongue and pen, with open antagonism and under- 
hand intrigue, with all the various social as well as politi- 
cal influences — the pamphlet, the press, the petticoat, and 
even the pulpit — to discredit everything done by the men 
in office, to turn public opinion against them, and if pos- 
sible to overthrow them. Pulteney and his supporters 
were now and then somewhat more unscrupulous in their 
measures than an English Opposition would be in our 
time, but theirs was unquestionably the policy of all our 
more modern English parties. From this time forth al- 
most to the close of his active career as a politician Pul- 
teney performed the part of Leader of Opposition in the 
strictly modern sense. His position in history seems to 
us to be distinctly marked as that of the first Leader of 
Opposition ; whether history shows reason to thank him 
for creating such a part is another and a different ques- 
tion. 

Pulteney had some powerful allies. The King, as we 
know, hated his son, the Prince of Wales ; the Prince of 
Wales hated his father. No reconciliation got up be- 
tween them could be lasting or real. The father and son 
hardly ever met except on the occasion of some great 
public ceremonial. The standing quarrel between the 
Sovereign and his heir had the effect of creating two par- 
ties in political life, one of which supported the King and 
the King's advisers, while the other found its centre in 
the house of the Heir to the Throne. We shall see this 
condition of things re - appearing in all the subsequent 
reigns of the Georges. The ministry and their friends 
were detested and denounced by those who surrounded 
the Prince of Wales ; the adherents of the Prince of 
Wales were virtually proscribed by the King. Then, as 
at a later date in the history of the Georges, those who 
favored and were favored by the Prince were looking out 
with anxious hope for the King's death. When " the old 
King is dead as nail in door," then indeed each leading 
supporter of the new king believed he could say with 
Falstaff, "The laws of England are at my commandment; 
happy are they which have been my friends." Pulteney 
and his supporters were among the friends and favorites 
of the Prince of Wales ; they constituted the Prince's 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



67 



party. The Prince's party was composed mainly of the 
men who were Tories but were not Jacobites, and of the 
Whigs who disliked Walpole or had been overlooked or 
offended by him, or who in sober honesty were opposed 
to his policy. In all these, and in a daily growing num- 
ber of the people out-of-doors, Pulteney had his friends 
ami Walpole his enemies. 

lint a more formidable rival than even Pulteney was 
now again to the front and active in hostility to Walpole. 
This was the man whom the official records of the time 
described as "the late Viscount Bolingbroke." The late 
Viscount Bolingbroke, it need hardly be said, means that 
Henry St. John whose title of viscount had been forfeited 
when lie tied to France and joined the Pretender. Bol- 
ingbroke had lately received the pardon of King George. 
lie had secured the pardon chiefly by means of an influ- 
i nee then familiar and recognized in politics — that of one 
of the King's mistresses. Bolingbroke had got money 
with his second wife, and through her he conveyed to 
the Duchess of Kendal a large sum — about ten thousand 
pounds — with the intimation that more would be forth- 
coming from the same place, if necessary, to obtain his 
object. The Duchess of Kendal was easily prevailed 
upon, under these circumstances, to recognize the justice 
of Bolingbroke's claim and the sincerity of his repent- 
ance. Moreover, there was about the same time that po- 
litical intrigue, or rather rivalry of intrigues, going on 
between Walpole and Carteret, between England and 
France, in which it was thought the influence of Boling- 
broke might be used with advantage — as it was, in fact, 
used — to Walpole's ends. For all these reasons the par- 
don was obtained, and Bolingbroke was allowed to return 
to England. Nor was he long put off with a mere for- 
giveness which kept from him his forfeited estates and 
his right to the family inheritance. "Here I am," he 
wrote to Swift soon after, " two-thirds restored, my per- 
son safe (unless I meet hereafter with harder treatment 
than even that of Sir Walter Raleigh), and my estate, 
with all the other property I have acquired or may ac- 
quire, secured to me. But the attainder is kept prudently 
in force, lest so corrupt a member should come again into 
the House of Lords, and his bad leaven should sour that- 
sweet, untainted mass." Walpole was quite willing that 
the forfeiture of Lord Bolingbroke's estates and the in- 
terruption of the inheritance should be recalled. It was 
necessary for this purpose to pass an Act of Parliament. 
On April 20, 1725, Lord Finch presented to the House of 
Lords the petition "of Henry St. John, late Viscount Bol- 
ingbroke." The petition set forth that the petitioner 
was •• truly concerned for his offence in not having sur- 
rendered himself, pursuant to the directions of an act of 
the first year of his Majesty's reign;" that he had lately, 
"in most humble and dutiful manner," made his submis- 
sion to the King, and given his Majesty "the strongest 
assurances of his inviolable fidelity, and of his zeal for 
his Majesty's service and for the support of the present 
happy establishment, which his Majesty hath been most 
graciously pleased to accept." The petition then prayed 
that leave might be given to bring in a bill to enable the 
petitioner and his heirs male to take and enjoy in person 
the estates of which he was then or afterwards should be 
possessed. Walpole, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, in- 
formed the House that he had received his Majesty's com- 
mand to say that George was satisfied with Bolingbroke's 
penitence, was convinced that Lord Bolingbroke was a 
proper object of mercy, and consented that the petition 
should be presented to the House. 

Lord Finch then moved that a bill be brought in to 
carry out the prayer of the petition. The Chancellor of 
t he Exchequer seconded and strongly advocated the mo- 
tion. It was opposed with great vigor by Mr. Methuen, 
the Controller of the Household, and formerly British 
Minister in Portugal. Methuen denounced Bolingbroke's 
" scandalous and villainous conduct " during his adminis- 



tration of affairs in Queen Anne's reign ; his clandestine 
negotiation for peace ; his insolent behavior towards the 
allies of England ; his sacrificing the interests of the 
whole Confederacy and the honor of his country — more 
especially in the abandonment of the Catalans; "and_to 
sum up all his crimes in one, his traitorous designs of 
defeating the Protestant succession, and of advancing a 
Popisli pretender to the throne." This speech, we read, 
" made a great impression on the Assembly," and several 
distinguished members, Arthur Onslow among the rest, 
spoke strongly on the same side. The motion, however, 
was carried by 231 votes against 113. The Bill was pre- 
pared, and went up to the House of Lords on May 5th, was 
carried there by a large majority, was sent back to the 
House of Commons with some slight amendments, was 
accepted there, and received the Royal assent. Some of 
the peers put on record a strong and earnest protest 
against the passing of such a measure. The protest re- 
cited all the charges against Bolingbroke; declared that 
those who signed it knew of no particular public services 
which Bolingbroke had lately rendered, and which would 
entitle him to a generous treatment; and further added 
that " no assurances which this person hath given " could 
be a sufficient security against his future insincerity, " he 
having already so often violated the most solemn assur- 
ances and obligations, and in defiance of them having 
openly attempted the dethroning his Majesty and the de- 
struction of the liberties of his country." 

Bolingbroke, however, wanted something more than res- 
toration to his title and to his forfeited right of inheri- 
tance. His active and untamed spirit was eager for po- 
litical strife again, and his heart burned with a longing 
to take his old place in the debates of the House of 
Lords. Against this Walpole had made a firm resolve; 
on this point he would not yield. He would not allow 
his eloquent and daring rival to have a voice in Parlia- 
ment any more. In this, as it seems to us, Walpole acted 
neither wisely nor magnanimously. Bolingbroke's safest 
place, so far as the interests of the public, and even the po- 
litical interests of his rivals, were concerned, would have 
been in the House of Lords. He would have delivered 
brilliant speeches there, and would have worked off his 
energies in that harmless fashion. In Walpole's time, 
however, the idea had not yet arisen that an enemy to 
the settled order of things is least dangerous where he 
is most free to speak. Bolingbroke, who had always 
hated Walpole, even lately when he was professing regard 
and gratitude, hated him now more than ever, and set to 
work by all the means in his power to injure Walpole in 
the estimation of the country, and, if possible, to under- 
mine his whole political position. 

Bolingbroke and Pulteney soon came into political com- 
panionship. There was a certain affinity between the in- 
tellectual nature of the two men ; and they had now a 
common object. Both were literary men as well as poli- 
ticians, and they naturally put their literary gifts to the 
fullest account in the campaign they had undertaken. In 
our days two such men combining for such a purpose 
would contrive to get incessant leading articles into some 
daily paper ; perhaps would start a weekly or even a daily 
evening paper of their own. Bolingbroke and Pulteney 
were men in advance of their age — in some respects at 
least. They did between them start a paper. They es- 
tablished the famous Craftsman. The Craftsman was 
started in 1726. It was first issued daily in single leaves 
or sheets after the fashion of the Spectator. It was soon, 
however, changed into a weekly newspaper bearing the 
title of the Craftsman, or Country Journal. Its editor, 
Nicholas Amhurst, took the feigned name of Caleb d'An- 
vers, and the paper itself was commonly called Caleb ac- 
cordingly. The Craftsman was brilliantly written, and 
was inspired by the most unscrupulous passion of partisan 
hate. Walpole was held up in prose and verse, in bold 
invective and droll lampoon, as a traitor to the country, 



68 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



as a man stuffed and gorged with public plunder, auda- 
cious in his profligate disregard of political principle and 
common honesty, a danger to the State and a disgrace to 
parliamentary life. The circulation of the Craftsman at 
one time surpassed that of the Spectator at the height of 
I he Spectator's popularity. Not always are more flies 
caught by honey than by vinegar. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

" OSNABBUCK ! OSNABRUCK !" 

The impeachment of Lord Macclesfield was ascribed, 
rightly or wrongly, to the influence of the Prince of 
Wales ; the comparative leniency of Lord Macclesfield's 
punishment to the favor and protection of the King. | 
Macclesfield was a justly distinguished judge. He had 
had the highest standing at the bar; had risen, step by 
step, until from plain Thomas Parker, the son of an attor- 
ney, he became Chief Justice of the Court of King's 
Bench, then one of the Lords Justices of the kingdom in 
the interval between Anne's death and the arrival of 
George the First, and finally Lord Chancellor. George 
made him Baron, and subsequently Earl, of Macclesfield. 
He had always borne a high reputation for probity as 
well as for generosity until the charge was made against 
him on which he was impeached. He was accused of 
having, while Lord Chancellor, sold the offices of Masters 
in Chancery to incompetent persons and men of straw, 
unfit to be intrusted with the money of suitors, but whom 
he had publicly represented to be " persons of great fort- 
unes, and in every respect qualified for that trust ;" with 
having extorted money from several of the masters, and 
with having embezzled the estates of widows and orphans. 
On May 6,"l725, the managers of the House of Commons 
appeared at the bar of the House of Lords and presented 
their articles of impeachment against Macclesfield. The 
trial took place at the bar of the House, and not in West- 
minster Hall, where impeachments were usually carried 
on, and it lasted until May 26th. There was nothing that 
could be called a defence to some of the charges, and as 
to others Lord Macclesfield simply insisted that he had 
followed the example of some of his most illustrious pred- 
ecessors, and that the moneys he received as presents were 
reckoned among the known perquisites of the Great Seal, 
and were not declared unlawful by any Act of Parliament. 
The Lords were unanimous in finding Macclesfield guilty, 
and condemned him to be fined thirty thousand pounds, 
and to be imprisoned in the Tower until the fine had been 
paid. The motion that he be declared forever incapable 
of any office, place, or employment in the State was, how- 
ever, rejected, as was also a motion to prohibit him from 
ever sitting in Parliament or coming within the verge of 
the court. It would certainly seem as if these motions 
ought to have been the natural and necessary consequence 
of the impeachment and the conviction. If the convic- 
tion were just — and it was obviously just — then Lord 
Macclesfield had disgraced the highest bench of justice, 
and merely to condemn him to disgorge a part of his 
plunder was a singularly inadequate sort of punishment. 
George the First, however, chose to ascribe the impeach- 
ment to the malice and the influence of the Prince of 
Wales, and when Macclesfield had paid the fine by the 
mortgage of an estate, the King undertook to repay the 
money to him. George actually did pay to Macclesfield 
one instalment of a thousand pounds, but fate interposed 
and prevented any further payment, Macclesfield retired 
from the world, and spent his remaining years in the study 
of science and in religious meditation. He died in 1732. 
His was a strange story. He had many of the noblest 
qualities ; he had had, on the whole, a great career. It is 
not easy, if we may borrow the words which Burke applied 
to a more picturesque and interesting sufferer, " to con- 
template without emotion that elevation and that fall." 
During all this time of comparative quietude we are 



not to suppose that there were no threatenings of foreign 
disturbance. The adherents of the Stuarts were never at 
rest ; the controversies which grew out of the Treaty of 
LTtrecht were always sputtering and menacing. Cardinal 
Fleury, a statesman devoted to peace and economy, had 
become Prime - minister of France. Other new figures 
were arising on the field of Continental politics. Albe- 
ronij in exile and disgrace, had been succeeded by a bur- 
lesque imitation of him, the Duke of Ripperda, a Dutch 
adventurer who turned diplomatist, and had risen into 
influence through Alberoni's favor. In 1725 Ripperda 
negotiated a secret treaty between the Emperor, Charles 
the Sixth, and the King of Spain, and was rewarded with 
the title of duke. He became Prime-minister of Spain 
for a short time, to be presently disgraced and thrown 
into prison, quite after the fashion of a royal favorite in 
the pages of "Gil Bias." He was a fantastic, arrogant, 
feather-headed creature, an Alberoni of the opera bouffe. 
He betook himself at last to the service of the Sovereign 
of Morocco. England had a sort of Ripperda of her own 
in the person of the wild Duke of Wharton, the man 
whose eloquent and ferocious invective had contributed 
to the sudden death of Lord Stanhope, and who had since 
that time devoted himself to the service of James Stuart 
on the Continent, and actually fought as a volunteer in 
the ranks of the Spanish army at the abortive siege of 
Gibraltar. It is to the credit of the sincerer and better 
supporters of the Stuart cause that they would not even 
still consent to regard it as wholly lost. They kept their 
eyes fixed on England, and every murmur of national dis- 
content or disturbance became to them a new encourage- 
ment, a fresh signal of hope, a reviving incitement to 
energy. In England men were constantly hearing rumors 
about the dissolute life of the Chevalier, and his quarrels 
with his wife, Clementina Maria, a granddaughter of one 
of the Kings of Poland. The loyalists here at home 
were ready to believe anything that could be said by 
anybody to the discredit of James and his adherents ; 
James and his adherents were willing to be fed on any 
tales about the unpopularity of George the First, and the 
tottering condition of his throne. Nor could it be said 
that George was popular with any class of persons in 
England. If the reign of the Brunswicks depended upon 
personal popularity, it would not have endured for many 
years. But the people of England were able to see clear- 
ly enough that George allowed his great minister to rule 
for him, and that Walpole's policy meant prosperity and 
peace. They did not admire George's mistresses any 
more now than they had done when first these ladies set 
their large feet on English soil ; but even some of the 
most devoted followers of the Stuart cause shook their 
heads sadly over the doings of James in Italy, and could 
not pretend to say that the cause of morality would gain 
much by a change from Brunswick to Stuart. 

The end was very near for George. He w T as now an 
old man, in his sixty-eighth year, and he had not led a 
life to secure a long lease of health. His excesses in eat- 
ing and drinking, his hot punch, and his many mistresses 
had proved too much even for his originally robust con- 
stitution. Of late he had become a mere wreck. He was 
eager to pay one other visit to Hanover, and he embarked 
at Greenwich on June 3, 1727, landing in Holland on the 
7th of the month. He made for his capital as quickly as 
he could, but in the course of the journey he was attacked 
by a sort of lethargic paralysis. Early on June 10th he 
was seized with an apoplectic fit ; his hands hung motion- 
less by his sides, his eyes were fixed, glassy, and staring, 
ami his tongue protruded from his mouth. The sight of 
him horrified his attendants ; they wished to stop at once 
and secure some assistance for the poor old dying King. 
George, however, recovered consciousness so far as to be 
able to insist on pursuing his journey, crying out, with 
spasmodic efforts at command, the words " Osnabruck ! 
Osnabruck !" At Osnabruck lived his brother the Prince- 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



69 



bishop. The attendants dared not disobey George, even 
at that moment, and the carriage drove at its fullest 
speed on towards Osnabruck. No swiftness of wheels, 
however, no flying chariot, could have reached the house 
of the Prince -bishop in time for the King. When the 
royal carriages clattered into the court -yard of the 
Prince-bishop's palace the reign of the first George was 
over — the old King lay dead in Ins seat. Lord Towns- 
hend and the Duchess of Kendal were following in differ- 
ent carriages on the road ; an express was sent back to 
tell them the grim news. Lord Townshend came on to 
Osnabruck, and finding that the King was dead, had 
nothing to do but to return home at once. The Duchess 
of Kendal is stated to have shown all the signs of grief 
proper to be expected from a favorite. She tore her hair 
— at least she pulled and clutched at it — and she beat her 
ample bosom, and professed the uttermost horror at the 
thought of having to endure life without the companion- 
ship of her lord and master. It is satisfactory, however, 
to know that she did not die of grief. She lived for 
some sixteen years, and made her home for the most part 
at Kendal House, near Twickenham. 

Even such a man as George the First may become in- 
vested by death with a certain dignity and something of 
a romantic interest. Legends are afloat concerning the 
King's later days which would not be altogether un- 
worthy the closing hours of a great Roman emperor. 
George had his melting moments, it would seem, and not 
long before his death, being in a pathetic mood, he gave 
the Duchess of Kendal a pledge that if he should die be- 
fore her, and it were possible for departed souls to return 
to earth and impress the living with a knowledge of their 
presence, he, the faithful and aged lover, would come 
back from the grave to his mistress. When the Duchess 
of Kendal returned to her home near Twickenham she 
was in constant expectation of a visit in some form from 
her lost adorer. One day wdiile the windows of her house 
were open a large black raven, or bird of some kind — 
raven would seem to be the more becoming and appro- 
priate form for such a visitor — flew into her presence from 
the outer air. The lamenting lady assumed at once that 
in this shape the soul of King George had come back to 
earth. She cherished and petted the bird, it is said, and 
lavished all fondness and tenderness upon it. What be- 
came of it in the end history does not allow us to know. 
Whether it still is sitting, like the more famous raven of 
poetry, it is not for us to guess. Probably when the 
Duchess herself expired, in 1743, the ghastly, grim, and 
ancient raven disappeared with her. Why George the 
First, if he had the power of returning in any shape to 
see his mistress, did not come in his own proper form, it 
iH not for us to explain. One might be disposed to imag- 
ine that in such a case it would be the first step which 
would involve the cost, and that there would be no greater 
difficulty for the departed soul to come back in the like- 
ness of its old vestment of clay than to put on the un- 
familiar and somewhat inconvenient form of a fowl. 
Perhaps the story is not true. Possibly there was no 
raven or other bird in the case at all. It may be that, if 
a black raven did fly in at the Duchess of Kendal's win- 
dow, the bird was not the embodied spirit of King George. 
For ourselves, we should be sorry to lose the story. Nei- 
ther the King nor the mistress could afford to part with 
any slight element of romance wherewithal even legend 
has chosen to invest them. Another story, which prob- 
ably has more truth in it, adds a new ghastliness to the 
circumstances of George's death. On November 13, 1726, 
some seven months before that event, there died in a Ger- 
man castle a woman whom the gazette of the capital de- 
scribed as the Electress Dowager of Hanover. This was 
the unfortunate Princess Sophia, the wife of George. 
Thirty -two years of melancholy captivity she had en- 
dured, while George was drinking and hoarding money 
and amusing himself with his seraglio of ugly women. 



She died protesting her innocence to the last. In the 
closing days of her illness, so runs the story, she gave 
into the hands of some one whom she could trust, a letter 
addressed to her husband, and obtained a promise that the 
letter should, somehow or other, be delivered to George 
himself. This letter contained a final declaration that 
she was absolutely guiltless of the offence alleged against 
her, a bitter reproach to George for his ruthless conduct, 
and a solemn summons to him to stand by her side before 
the judgment -seat of Heaven within a year, and there 
make answer in her presence for the wrongs he had done 
her, for her blighted life and her miserable death. There 
was no way of getting this letter into George's hands 
while the King was in England, but an arrangement was 
made by means of which it was put into his coach when 
he crossed the frontier of Germany on his way towards 
his capital. George, it is said, opened the letter at once, 
and was so surprised and horror-stricken by its stern sum- 
mons that he fell that moment into the apoplectic fit from 
which he never recovered. Sophia, therefore, had herself 
accomplished her own revenge; her reproach had killed 
the King; her summons brought him at once within the 
ban of that judgment to which she had called him. It 
would be well if one could believe the story; there would 
seem a dramatic justice — a tragic retribution — about it. 
Its very terror would dignify the story of a life that, on 
the whole, was commonplace and vulgar. But, for our- 
selves, we confess that w'e cannot believe in the myste- 
rious letter, the fatal summons, the sudden fulfilment. 
There are too many stories of the kind floating about his- 
tory to allow us to attach any special significance to this 
particular tale. We doubt even whether, if the letter 
had been written, it would have greatly impressed the 
mind of George. Remorse for the treatment of his wife 
he could not have felt — he was incapable of any such 
emotion ; and we question whether any appeal to the 
sentiment of the supernatural, any summons to another 
and an impalpable world, would have made much impres- 
sion on that stolid, prosaic intelligence and that heart of 
lead. Besides, according to some versions of the tale, it 
was not, after all, a letter from his wife which impressed 
him, but only the warning of a fortune-teller — a woman 
who admonished the King to be careful of the life of his 
imprisoned consort, because it was fated for him that he 
should not survive her a year. This story, too, is told of 
many kings and other persons less illustrious. 

Much more probable is the rumor that Sophia made a 
will bequeathing all her personal property to her son, that 
the will was given to George the First in England, and 
that he composedly destroyed it. If George committed 
this act, he seems to have been repaid in kind. His own 
will left large legacies to the Duchess of Kendal and to 
other ladies. The Archbishop of Canterbury gave the 
will to the new King, who read it, put it in his pocket, 
walked away with it, and never produced it again. Both 
these stories are doubted by some of the contemporaries 
of George the Second, but they were firmly believed in 
and strongly asserted by others, who seem to have had 
authority for their belief. At all events, they fit in bet- 
ter with the character and surroundings of both princes 
than the tragic story of the letter and its fearful summons, 
the warning of the fortune-teller, or the soul of the dead 
King revisiting the earth in the funereal form of a raven. 

There is not much that is good to be said of George 
the First. He had a certain prosaic honesty, and was 
frugal amid all his vulgar voluptuousness. He managed 
the expenses of his court with creditable economy and 
regularity. The officers in his army, and his civil ser- 
vants, received their pay at the properly-appointed time. 
It would be hardly worth while recording these particu- 
lars to the King's credit, but that it was somewhat of a 
novelty in the arrangements of a modern court for men 
to receive the reward of their services at regular intervals 
and in the proper amount. George occasionally did a 



70 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



liberal tiling, and he more than once professed a strong 
interest in the improvement of university education. He 
is said to have declared to a German nobleman; who was 
complimenting him on the possession of two such king- 
doms as England and Hanover, that a king ought to be 
congratulated rather on having two such subjects as New- 
ton ill the one country and Leibnitz in the other. We 
fear, however, that this story must go with the fortune- 
teller and the raven ; one cannot think of dull prosaic 
George uttering such a monumental sort of sentiment. 
He cared nothing for literature or science or art. He 
seems to have had no genuine friendships. He hated his 
son, and he used to speak of his daughter-in-law, Caroline, 
as " that she-devil the princess." Whatever was respect- 
able in his character came out best at times of trial. He 
was not a man whom danger could make afraid. At the 
most critical moments — as, for instance, at the outbreak 
of the rebellion in 1715 — he never lost his head. If he 
was not capable of seeing far, he saw clearly, and he could 
look coming events steadily in the face. On one or two 
occasions, when an important choice had to be made be- 
tween this political course and that, he chose quickly and 
well. The fact that he thoroughly appreciated the wis- 
dom and the political integrity of Walpole speaks, per- 
haps, his highest praise. His reign, on the whole, was 
one of prosperity for England. He did not love England 
— never, up to the very end, cared for the country over 
which destiny had appointed him to rule. His soul to 
the last was faithful to Hanover. England was to him 
as tlie State wife whom for political reasons he was com- 
pelled to marry; Hanover, as the sweetheart and mistress 
of his youth, to whom his affections, such as they were, 
always clung, and whom he stole out to see at every pos- 
sible chance. George behaved much better to his polit- 
ical consort, England, than to the veritable wife of his 
bosom. He managed England's affairs for her like an 
honest, straightforward, narrow-minded steward. We 
shall see hereafter that England came to be governed 
much worse by men not nearly so bad as George the First. 
To do him justice, he knew when he ought to leave the 
business of the State in the hands of those who under- 

st 1 it better than he ; this one merit redeemed many of 

his faults, and, perhaps, may be regarded as having se- 
cured his dynasty. Frederick the Great described George 
as a prince who governed England by respecting liber- 
ty, even while he made use of the subsidies granted by 
Parliament to corrupt the Parliament which voted them. 
He was a king, Frederick declares, " without ostentation 
and without deceit," and who won by his conduct the 
confidence of Europe. This latter part of the description 
is a little too polite. Kings do not criticise each other 
too keenly in works that are meant for publication. But 
the words form, on the whole, an epitaph for George 
which might be inscribed on his tomb without greater 
straining of the truth than is common in the monumental 
inscriptions that adorn the graves of less exalted persons. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

GEORGE TIIE SECOND. 

The year when George the First died was made mem- 
orable forever by the death of a far greater man than any 
European king of that generation. When describing the 
events which led to the publication of the "Drapier's 
Letters," we mentioned the fact that Sir Isaac Newton 
had been consulted about the coinage of Wood's half- 
pence. That was the last time that Isaac Newton ap- 
peared as a living figure in public controversy of any 
kind. On March 20, 1727, the great philosopher died, 
after much suffering, at his house in Kensington. The 
epitaph which Pope intended for him sums up as well as 
a long discourse could do his achievements in science — 

"Nature and Nature*s laws lay hid in night ; 
God said, ' Let Newton he,' and all was light." 



No other discovery ever made in science approaches in 
importance to the discovery of the principle of universal 
gravitation — the principle that every particle of matter is 
attracted by every other particle with a force propor- 
tioned inversely to the square of their distances. Vague 
ideas of some such principle had long been floating in the 
minds of some men ; had probably been thus floating since 
ever men began to think seriously over the phenomena 
of inanimate nature. But the discovery of the principle 
was, however, as distinctly the achievement of Newton as 
" Paradise Lost " is the work of Milton. We find it hard 
now to form to ourselves any clear idea of a world to 
which Newton's principle was unknown. It would be 
almost as easy to realize the idea of a world without 
light or atmosphere. Newton is called by Sir David 
Brewster the greatest philosopher of any age. Sir John 
Herschel assigns to the name of Newton "a place in our 
veneration which belongs to no other in the annals of 
science." In this book we have only to record the date 
at which the pure and simple life of this great man came 
to its end. The important events of his career belong to 
an earlier period ; his teachings and his fame are for all 
time. The humblest of historians as well as the greatest 
may ask himself what is the principle of history which 
bids us to assign so much more space to the wars of 
kings and the controversies of statesmen than to the life 
and the deeds of a man like Newton. In the whole his- 
tory of the world during Newton's lifetime the one most 
important fact, the one fact of which the magnitude 
dwarfs all other facts, is the discovery of the principle 
of gravitation. Yet its meaning may be explained in 
fewer words than would be needed to describe the nat- 
ure of the antagonism between Walpole and Pulteney, 
or the reason why Queen Anne was succeeded by King 
George. 

We have, however, in these pages only to deal with 
history in its old and, we suppose, its everlasting fashion 
— that of telling what happened in the way of actual 
fact, telling the story of the time. The English public 
took the death of George the First with becoming com- 
posure ; the vast majority of the people never troubled 
their heads about it. It gave a flutter of hope to Spain ; 
it set the councils of the Stuart party in eager commo- 
tion for a while; but it made no change in England. 
" George the First was always reckoned Vile ; still viler 
George the Second." These are the lines in which Wal- 
ter Savage Landor sums up the character of the first and 
second George before passing on to picture in little the 
characters of the third and fourth of the name. Landor 
was not wrong when he described George the Second 
as, on the whole, rather worse than George the First. 
George the Second was born at Hanover on October 
30, 1683, and was therefore in his forty -fourth year 
when he succeeded to the throne. He had still less nat- 
ural capacity than his father. He was parsimonious ; he 
was avaricious ; he was easily put out of temper. His 
instincts, feelings, passions were all purely selfish. He 
had hot hatreds and but cool friendships. Personal cour- 
age was, perhaps, the only quality becoming a sovereign 
which George the Second possessed. He had served as a 
volunteer under Marlborough in 1708, and at the battle 
of Oudenarde he had headed a charge of his Hanoverian 
dragoons with a bravery worthy of a prince. He is to 
serve later on at Dettingen, and to be in all probability the 
last English sovereign who commanded in person on the 
battlefield. His education was not even so good as that 
of his father, and he had an utter contempt for literature. 
He had little religious feeling, but is said to have had 
a firm belief in the existence of vampires. He was fond 
of business — devoted to the small ways of routine. He 
took a great interest in military matters and all that con- 
cerned the arrangements and affairs of an army. Like 
his father he found abiding pleasure in the society of a 
little group of more or less attractive mistresses. 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



71 



George tbe Second had always detested his father, and 
(luring the greater part of their lives was equally detested 
by him. The reconciliation which had lately taken place 
between them was as formal and superficial as that of the 
two demons described in Le Sage's story. " They brought 
us together," says Asmodeus ; "they reconciled us. We 
shook hands, and became mortal enemies." When the 
reconciliation between George the Second and his father 
was brought about by the influence of Stanhope and of 
Walpole, the father and son shook hands and continued 
t<> he mortal enemies. If George the First had his court 
at St. James's, George the Second had his court and cote- 
rie gathered around him at Leicester Fields and at Rich- 
mond. The two courts were, in fact, little better than 
hostile camps. Walpole had been for long years the con- 
fidential and favored servant of George the First. The 
natural expectation was that he would be instantly dis- 
credited and discarded when George the Second came to 
the throne. 

So, indeed, it seemed at first to happen. When Wal- 
pole received the news of George the First's death he 
hastened to Richmond Lodge, where George the Second 
then was, in order to give him the news and hail him as 
King. George was in bed, and had to be roused from a 
thick sleep. He was angry at being disturbed, and not 
in a humor to admit that there was any excuse for dis- 
turbing him. When Walpole told him that his father 
was dead, the kingly answer of the sovereign was that the 
statesman's assertion was a big lie. George roared this 
at Walpole, and then was for turning round in his bed 
and settling down to sleep again. Walpole, however, 
persisted in disturbing the royal slumbers, and assured 
the drowsy grumbler that he really was George the Sec- 
ond, King of England. He produced for George's fur- 
ther satisfaction a letter from Lord Townshend, describ- 
ing the time, place, and circumstances of the late King's 
death. Walpole tendered the usual ceremonial expres- 
sions of loyalty, which George received coldly and even 
gruffly. Then the minister asked whom his Majesty 
wished to appoint to draw up the necessary declaration 
for the Privy Council. Walpole assumed as a matter of 
course that the King would leave the task in his hands. 
George, however, disappointed him. " Compton," said 
the King ; and when he had spoken that word he inti- 
mated to Walpole that the interview was over. Walpole 
left the royal abode believing himself a fallen man. 

" Compton," whom the King had thus curtly desig- 
nated, was Sir Spencer Compton, who had been chosen 
Speaker of the House of Commons in 1715. He had been 
one of George the Second's favorites while George was 
still Prince of Wales. He was a man of respectable 
character, publicly and privately, but without remarkable 
capacity of any kind. He knew little or nothing of the 
business of a minister, and it is said that when Walpole 
came to him to tell him of the King's command he frank- 
ly acknowledged that he did not know how to draw up 
the formal declaration. Walpole good-naturedly came to 
bin assistance, took his pen, and did the work for him. 

If the King had persevered in his objection to Wal- 
pole, the story of the reign would have to be very differ- 
ently told. Walpole was the one only man who could at 
the time have firmly stood between England and foreign 
intrigue — between England and financial blunder. Nor is 
it unlikely that the King would have persevered and re- 
fused to admit Walpole to office but that he happened to 
be, without his own knowledge, under the influence of 
the one only woman who had any legitimate right to in- 
fluence him — his wife Caroline. Caroline, daughter of a 
petty German prince — the Margrave of Brandenburg- 
Anspach— was one of the most remarkable women of her 
time. Her faults, foibles, and weaknesses only served to 
make her more remarkable. She had beauty when she 
was young, and she still had an expressive face and a 
sweet smile. She was well educated, and always con- 



tinued to educate herself ; she was fond of letters, art, 
politics, and metaphysics. She delighted in theological 
controversy, and also delighted in contests of mere wit. 
But of all her valuable gifts, the most valuable for her- 
self and for the country was the capacity she had for 
governing her husband. She governed him through his 
very anxiety not to be governed by his wife. One of 
George's strongest, and at the same time meanest, desires 
was to let the world see that he was absolute master in 
his own house, and could rule his wife with a rod of iron. 
Caroline, having long since discovered this weakness, 
played into the King's hands, and always made outward 
show of the utmost deference for his authority, and dread 
of his anger. She put herself metaphorically, and indeed 
almost literally, under his feet. She was pleased that all 
the Court should see her thus grovelling. George was 
in the habit of making jocular allusion, in his'jovial, 
graceful way, to living and dead sovereigns who were 
governed by their wives, and he often invited his court- 
iers to _ notice the difference between them ami him, and 
to admire the imperial supremacy which he exercised over 
the humble Caroline. By humoring him in this way Car- 
oline obtained, without any consciousness on his part, an 
almost absolute power over him. Another and a worse 
failing of the King's she humored as well. She had suf- 
fered much in the beginning of her married life because 
of his amours and his mistresses. Her true and faithful 
heart had been wrung by long jealousies; but, happily for 
herself and for the country, she was able at last to rise su- 
perior to this natural weakness of woman. Indeed, it has 
to be said with regret for her self-degradation, that she 
not only tolerated the love-makings of the King and his 
favorites, but even showed occasionally a politic interest in 
the promotion of the amours and the appointment of the 
ladies. She humored her lord and master's avarice with 
as little scruple. Thus his principal defects — his sordid 
love of money, his ignoble passion for women, and his 
ridiculous desire to seem the absolute master of his wife — 
became in her skilful hands the leading-strings by which 
she drew and guided him whither she would have him go. 
Through Caroline's influence mainly Walpole was retained 
in power. She played on the King's avarice, and poured 
into his greedy ear the assurance that Walpole could raise 
money as no other living man could. Caroline acted in 
this chiefly from a sincere love of her husband, and anx- 
iety for his good, but partly also, it has to be acknowl- 
edged, because it had been made known to her that Wal- 
pole would provide her with a larger allowance than it 
was Compton's intention to do. The result was that Wal- 
pole was retained in office, or, perhaps it should be said, 
restored to office. The crowds of courtiers who love to 
worship the rising sun had hardly time to offer their 
adoration to Compton when they found that the supposed 
rising sun was only a meteor, wdiieh instantly vanished. 
Horace Walpole the younger describes the event by a 
happy phrase as " Compton's evaporation." Compton 
himself had soon found that the responsibility would be 
too much for him. He besought the King to relieve him 
of the burden to which he found himself unequal. The 
King acceded to his wish. Walpole became once again 
First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, and Townshend continued to be Secretary of 
State. The crisis was over. 

Parliament assembled on June 15th, after the death of 
George the First. As the law then stood, any Parliament 
summoned by a sovereign was not to be dissolved by that 
sovereign's death, but should continue to sit and act dur- 
ing a term of six months, " unless the same shall be sooner 
prorogued or dissolved by such person who shall be next 
heir to the Crown of this Realm in succession." The 
meeting of June 15th was merely formal. Parliament was 
prorogued by a Commission from George the Second un- 
til the 27th of the month. Both Houses then met at 
Westminster, and the Kins; came to the House of Peers 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



in his royal robes and ascended the throne with all the 
regular ceremonial. Sir Charles Dalton, Gentleman Usher 
of the Black Rod, was sen! with a message from the King 
commanding the attendance of the Commons. When the 
Commons had crowded into the space appointed for them 
in the Peers' Chamber, the King "delivered from his own 
mouth" the Royal speech. George the Second had at all 
events one advantage over George the First as a King of 
England — he understood the language of his subjects, 
and could speak to them in their own tongue. The Royal 
speech began by expressing the King's persuasion that 
"you all share with me in my grief and affliction for the 
death of my late royal father." The King was well war- 
ranted in this persuasion ; nothing could be more correct 
than his assumption. The Lords and Commons quite 
shared with him his grief and affliction for the death 
of his royal father. They felt just as much distress at 
that event as he did. The King then went on to declare 
his fixed resolution to merit by all possible means the love 
and affection of his people ; to preserve the Constitution 
"as it is now happily established in Church and State ;" 
and to secure to all his subjects the full enjoyment of 
their religious and civil rights. He expressed his satis- 
faction at the manner in which tranquillity and the bal- 
ance of power in Europe had been maintained, the strict 
union and harmony which bad hitherto subsisted among 
the allies of the Treaty of Hanover, and which had chiefly 
contributed to the near prospect of a general peace. Fi- 
nally, the King pointed out that the grant of the greatest 
part of his Civil List revenues had now run out, and that 
it would be necessary for the House of Commons to make 
a new provision for the support of him and of his family. 
"I am persuaded," said the King, "that the experience of 
past times and a due regard to the honor and dignity of 
the Crown will prevail upon you to give me this first 
proof of your zeal and affection in a manner answerable 
to the necessities of my Government." Then the King 
withdrew, and Lord Chesterfield moved for "an address 
of condolence, congratulation, and thanks." The condol- 
ing and congratulating address was unanimously voted, 
was presented next day to his Majesty, and received his 
Majesty's most gracious acknowledgment. Meanwhile the 
Commons having returned to their House, several new 
members took the oaths. Sir Paul Methuen, Treasurer of 
the Household, the author of the commercial treaty with 
Portugal which still bears his name, moved an address of 
condolence and congratulation to the King. The motion 
■was seconded by Sir Robert Walpole, and as the formal 
record puts it, "voted nemine contradicente." A commit- 
tee was appointed to draw up the address, Sir Robert 
Walpole, of course, being one of its members. The chair- 
man of the committee paid Walpole the compliment of 
handing him the pen, " whereupon," as a contemporary 
account reports it, " Sir Robert, without hesitation and 
with a masterly hand, drew up the said address." Wal- 
pole could be courtly enough when he thought fit. He 
seems to have distinctly outdone the House of Lords in 
the fervor of his grief for the late King and his devotion 
to the present. The death of George the First, Walpole 
pronounced to be "a loss to this nation which your Maj- 
esty alone could possibly repair." Having mentioned the 
fact that the death of George the First had plunged all 
England into grief, Walpole changed, " as by the stroke 
of an enchanter's wand," this winter of our discontent 
into glorious summer. " Your immediate succession," he 
assured the King, "banished all our grief." 

On Monday, July 3d, the Commons met to consider the 
amount of supply to he granted to his Majesty. Wal- 
pole, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, stated to the House 
that the annual sum of seven hundred thousand pounds, 
granted to the late King "for the support of his house- 
hold and of the honor and dignity of the Crown," had 
fallen short every year, and that ministers had been 
obliged to make it up in other ways. The present .sov- 



ereign's necessary expenses were likely to increase, the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer explained, " by reason of the 
largeness of his family" and the necessity of "settling a 
household for his royal consort." The Chancellor of the 
Exchequer therefore moved that the entire revenues of 
the Civil List, which produced about one hundred and 
thirty thousand pounds a year above the yearly sum of 
seven hundred thousand pounds already mentioned, 
should be settled on his Majesty during life. The mo- 
tion was supported by several members, but Mr. Shippen, 
the earnest and able though somewhat eccentric Jacobite 
and Tory, had the spirit and courage to oppose it. Ship- 
pen's speech was expressed in a spirit of loyalty, but was 
direct and incisive in its criticism of the Government 
proposal. Shippen pointed out that the yearly sum of 
seven hundred thousand pounds, now thought too little, 
was not obtained by the late sovereign without a long 
and solemn debate, and was described by every one who 
contended for it as an ample revenue for a king. He re- 
minded the House that Queen Anne used to pay about 
nineteen thousand pounds a year out of her own pocket 
for the augmentation of the salaries of poor clergymen, 
allowed five thousand pounds a year out of the Post-office 
revenue to the Duke of Marlborough, gave several hun- 
dred thousand pounds for the building of the castle of 
Blenheim, and by this means came under the necessity 
of asking Parliament for five hundred thousand pounds, 
which she determined never to do again, and had there- 
fore prepared a scheme for the reduction of her expenses 
which was to bring her full yearly outlay down to four 
hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Shippen then se- 
verely criticised the foreign policy of the late King's 
reign, and with justice condemned the extravagance 
which required to be met by repeated grants from the 
nation. " I confess," he said, " that if the same manage- 
ment was to be continued, and if the same ministers were 
to be again employed, a million a year would not he suffi- 
cient to carry on the exorbitant expenses so often and so 
justly complained of in this House." He deplored the 
vast sum " sunk in the bottomless gulf of secret service." 
"I heartily wish," he exclaimed, "that time, the great 
discoverer of hidden truths and concealed iniquities, may 
produce a list of all such — if any such there were — who 
have been perverted from their public duty by private 
pensions, who have been the hired slaves and the corrupt 
instruments of a profuse and vainglorious administra- 
tion." Shippen concluded by moving as an amendment 
that the amount granted to his Majesty be the clear year- 
ly sum of seven hundred thousand pounds. It is worth 
noticing that when Shippen had occasion once to refer to 
some of Walpole's arguments he spoke of him as " my 
honorable friend," and then, suddenly correcting himself, 
said, " I ask pardon ; I should have said the honorable 
person, for there is no friendship betwixt us." 

Shippen's speech hit hard, and must have been felt by 
the ministry. The one charge against Walpole's govern- 
ment which he could not refute was the charge of extrav- 
agance in corruption. The ministers, however, affected 
to treat the speech with contempt, and were justified in 
doing so by the manner in which the House of Commons 
dealt with it. No answer was given to Shippen's state- 
ments, because Shippen's motion was not seconded and 
fell to the ground. The resolutions proposed by the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer were carried without a di- 
vision, and a bill was ordered to be brought in to give 
effect to them. A provision of one hundred thousand 
pounds a year was voted for the Queen, in case she should 
survive the King. The vote was agreed to without di- 
vision or debate. Parliament was dissolved by proclama- 
tion on August 7th. 

The new Parliament met on January 23d, 1728. It 
was found that the ministerial majority was even greater 
than it had been before. The King opened Parliament 
in person, and directed the Commons, who had been sum- 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



73 



moned to the House of Peers, to return to their own 
House and choose their Speaker. The Commons unani- 
mously chose Arthur Onslow to this high office. Comp- 
ton, the former Speaker, had been soothed with a peerage 
after his " evaporation." Arthur Onslow was born in 
hi'.M, and had been in Parliament from 1719; in July, 
1728, he was made Privy Councillor. We may anticipate 
e\ ruts a little for the purpose of mentioning the fact that 
all the writers of his time united in ascribing to Speaker 
Onslow, as he has always since been called, a combination 
of the best attributes which fit a man to preside over the 
1 1 "use of Commons. It is said that his election to the 
Speaker's chair was brought about mainly by Sir Robert 
Walpole, and that Walpole expected Onslow to use his 
great abilities and authority to suit the policy and serve 
tlie wishes of the administration. If this was Walpole's 
idea, he must soon have found himself as much mistaken 
as the conclave of cardinals about whom so much is said 
in history, romance, and the drama, who elected one of 
their order as Pope because they believed him to be too 
feeble and nerveless to have any will of his own, and 
were much amazed to find that the moment the new Pope 
had been elected he suddenly became strong and ener- 
getic — the master and not the servant. Onslow's whole 
conduct in the chair of the House of Commons during 
the many years which he occupied it displayed an abso- 
lute and fearless impartiality. The chair has never been 
better filled in English history ; the very title of " Speak- 
er Onslow," ever afterwards given to him, is of itself a 
tribute to his impartiality and his services. Onslow was 
a man who loved letters and art, and also, it is said, loved 
studying all varieties of life. It is reported of him that 
he used to go about disguised, like a sort of eighteenth- 
century Haroun-al-Raschid, among the lowest classes of 
men, in out-of-the-way parts of the capital, for the pur- 
pose of studying the forms and manners of human life. 
Legend has preserved the memory of a certain public- 
house, called " The Jews' - harp," where Onslow is said 
tii have amused himself many an evening, sitting in the 
chimney - corner and exchanging talk and jests with the 
company who frequented the place. It is pleasant to be 
able to believe these stories of Speaker Onslow in that 
highly artificial and formal age — that age of periwigs 
and paint and shallow formulas. It is somewhat re- 
freshing to meet with this clever man of eccentric ways, 
the great " Speaker," who could wear his official robes 
with so much true dignity, and then, when he had laid 
them aside, could amuse himself after his own fashion, 
and study life in some of its queerest corners with the 
freshness of a school-boy and the eye of an artist. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

"the patriots." 

The name and the career of William Pulteney are all 
but forgotten in English political life. It is doubtful 
whether Pultcney's name, if pronounced in the course of 
a debate in the House of Commons just now, would bring 
with it any manner of idea to the minds of nine-tenths 
of tlie listening members. Yet Pulteney played, all un- 
consciously, a great part in the development of the Par- 
liamentary life of this country. So far as intellectual 
gifts are concerned, he is not, of course, to be named in 
tlie same breath with a man like Burke, for example; 
one might as well think of comparing Offenbach with 
Mozart or Handel. But the influence of the career of 
Pulteney on the English Parliament is nevertheless more 
distinctly marked than the influence of the career of 
Burke. We are speaking now not of political thought 
— no man ever made a greater impression on political 
thought than Burke has done — but only of the forms and 
the development of English Parliamentary systems. For 
Pulteney was, beyond all question, the founder of the 
modern practice of Parliamentary opposition. Walpole 



was mainly instrumental in transferring the seat of polit- 
ical power from the House of Lords to the House of 
Commons. Never, since Walpole's time, has the House 
of Lords exercised any real influence over the political 
life of England. This was not Walpole's doing ; it was 
the doing of time and change, of altered conditions and 
new forces. But Walpole saw the coming change, and 
bent all the energies of his robust intellect to help and 
forward it. Pulteney is in the same sense the author of 
the modern principle of Parliamentary opposition ; but 
there is no reason to believe that Pulteney saw what he 
was doing as clearly as Walpole did. L T ntil the begin- 
ning of Pulteney's brilliant career the opposition between 
parties had been mainly a competition for the ear and 
the favor of the sovereign. Thus Harley strove against 
Marlborough, and Bolingbroke against Harley, and the 
Whigs against Harley and Bolingbroke. But the course 
of action taken by Pulteney against Walpole converted 
the struggle into one of party against party, inside and 
outside of the House of Commons. The object sought 
was the command of a majority in the representative as- 
sembly. Pulteney showed how this was to be obtained 
by the voices of the public out-of-doors as well as by 
the votes of the elected representatives in Westminster. 
Walpole had made it clear that in the House of Commons 
the battle was to be fought ; Pulteney showed that in 
the House of Commons the victory was to be gained, not 
by the favor of the sovereign, but by the co-operation of 
the people. 

We have said in a former chapter that Pulteney's form 
of procedure, become now a component part of our whole 
Parliamentary system, brings with it some serious disad- 
vantages from which, for the present, it is not easy, it is 
not even possible, to see any way of escape. The princi- 
ple of government by party will some time or other come 
to be put to the challenge in English political life. For 
the present, however, we have only to make the best we 
can of it ; and no one in his senses can doubt that it was 
an immense advance on the system of back-stairs influ- 
ence and bedchamber intrigue — the policy, to use the 
great Conde's expression," of petticoats and alcoves," which 
prevailed in the days when Mrs. Masham was competing 
with Sarah Jennings, and later still, when Walpole was 
buying his way back to power through the influence of 
the sovereign's wife, in co-operation with the sovereign's 
paramour. 

The student of English history will have to turn with 
close attention to the reigns of the First and Second 
George. In those reigns the transfer of power to the 
representative chamber began, and the modern system of 
Parliamentary opposition grew into form. The student 
will have to remember that the time he is studying was 
one when there was no such thing known in England as 
a public meeting. There were "demonstrations," as we 
call them now; there were crowds; there were proces- 
sions; there were tumults; there were disturbances, riots, 
reading of Riot Acts, dispersion of mobs, charges of cav- 
alry, fusillades of infantry; but there were no great pub- 
lic meetings called together for the discussion of momen- 
tous political questions. The rapid growth of the popu- 
lar newspaper, soon to swell up like the prophet's gourd, 
had hardly begun as yet. We cannot call the Craftsman 
a newspaper ; it was rather a series of pamphlets. It 
stood Pulteney instead of the more modern newspaper. 
He worked on public opinion with it outside the House 
of Commons. Inside the House he made it his business 
to form a party which should assail the ministry on all 
points, lie in wait to find occasion for attacking it, at- 
tack it rightly or wrongly, attack it even at the risk of 
exposing national weakness or bringing on national dan- 
ger, keep attacking it always. In former days a leader 
of opposition had often been disdainful of the opinion of 
the vulgar herd out-of-doors ; Pulteney and his compan- 
ions set" themselves to appeal especially to the prejudices, 



74 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



passions, and ignorance of the vulgar herd. They made 
it their business to create a public opinion of their own. 
They dealt in the manufacture of public opinion. They 
set up political shops wherein to retail the article which 
they had thus manufactured. Pulteney was now in his 
pi-inn — still some years inside fifty. He was full of en- 
ergy and courage, and he threw his whole soul into his 
work. Much of what he did was undoubtedly dictated 
by his spite against Walpole, but much, too, was the 
mere outcome of his ambition, his energy, and the pecul- 
iar character of his intellect. He enjoyed playing a con- 
spicuous part and he liked attacking somebody. People 
used to think at one time that Mr. Disraeli had a pro- 
found personal hatred for Sir Robert Peel when he was 
flinging off his philippics against that great minister. It 
afterwards appeared clear enough that Mr. Disraeli had 
no particular dislike to his opponent, but that he enjoyed 
attacking an important statesman. Pulteney, of course, 
did actually begin his career of imbittered opposition 
because of his quarrel with Walpole ; but it is likely 
enough that even if no quarrel had ever taken place, 
and he never had been Walpole's friend and colleague, he 
would sooner or later have become the foremost gladia- 
tor of opposition all the same. 

The materials of opposition consisted of three pplitical 
groups of men. There were the Jacobites, under Ship- 
pen ; the Tories who no longer acknowledged themselves 
Jacobites, and who were led by Sir William Wyndham ; 
and there were the discontented Whigs whom Pulteney 
led and whose discontent he turned to his own uses. It 
had long been a scheme of Bolingbroke's — up to this 
time it should perhaps rather be called a dream than a 
scheme — to combine these three groups into one distinct 
party, having its bond of union in a common detestation 
of Walpole. The dream now seemed likely to become a 
successful scheme. The conception of this plan of oppo- 
sition was unquestionably Bolingbroke's and not Pulte- 
ney's ; but it fell to Pulteney's lot to work it out in the 
House of Parliament, and he performed his task with 
consummate ability. Pulteney was probably the great- 
est leader of Opposition ever known in the House of 
Commons, with the single exception of Mr. Disraeli. 
Charles Fox, with all his splendid genius for debate, was 
not a skilful or a patient leader of Opposition. Perhaps 
he was too great of heart for such a part ; certain it is 
that as a leader of Opposition he made some fatal mis- 
takes. Pulteney seemed cut out for the part which a 
strange combination of chances had allowed him to play. 
He was not merely a debater of inexhaustible resource 
and a master of all the trick and craft of Parliamenta- 
ry leadership ; but he thoroughly understood the impor- 
tance of public support out-of-doors, and the means of 
getting at it and retaining it. Pulteney saw that the 
time had come when the English people would have 
their say in every political question. 

By the combined influence of Pulteney and Boling- 
broke there was formed a party of ultra -Whigs, who 
somewhat audaciously called themselves " The Patriots." 
Perhaps the title was first given to them by Walpole, in 
contempt ; if so, they accepted and adopted it. Again 
and again in our history this phenomenon presents it- 
self. Some men of ability and unsatisfied ambition be- 
longing to the Liberal party become discontented with 
the policy of their leaders. When the first opportunity 
arises they make a public declaration against that policy. 
In the Conservative ranks there are to be found some 
other men, also able and also discontented, to whom the 
general policy of Opposition seems unsatisfactory and 
feeble. Each of these discontented parties fancies itself 
to be truly patriotic, public -spirited, and independent. 
The two factions at length unite for the common good 
of the country; they tell the world that they are patri- 
ots, that they are the only patriots, and the world for a 
while believes them. This was the condition of things 



when Pulteney in Parliament joined with Sir William 
Wyndham, the extreme Jacobite, the Wyndham who is 
mentioned in Pope's poem about his Twickenham grotto, 
the Wyndham with whom Bolingbroke corresponded for 
many years, and to whom he addressed one of his most 
important political manifestoes. Sir William Wyndham 
belonged to an old Somersetshire family. He was a 
staunch Tory. He had powerful connections ; his first 
wife was a daughter of the haughty Duke of Somerset. 
He entered Parliament and made a considerable figure 
there. He had been Secretary at War and afterwards 
Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Tories ; he had 
clung to Bolingbroke's fortunes at the time of Boling- 
broke's rupture with Harley. He underwent the com- 
mon fate of Tory statesmen on the accession of George 
the First ; he was deprived of office, was accused of tak- 
ing part in the Jacobite conspiracy, and was committed 
to the Tower. There was, however, no evidence against 
him, and he resumed his political career. His eloquence 
is described by Speaker Onslow as "strong, full, and 
without affectation, arising chiefly from his clearness, 
propriety, and argumentation ; in the method of which 
last, by a sort of induction almost peculiar to himself, 
he had a force beyond any man I ever heard in public 
debates." Lord Hervey, who can be trusted not to over- 
do the praise of any one, says of Wyndham that " he 
was very far fr%nr having first-rate parts, but by a gen- 
tleman like general behavior, a constant attendance in 
the House of Commons, a close application to the busi- 
ness of it, and frequent speaking, he had got a sort of 
Parliamentary routine, and without being a bright speak- 
er was a popular one, well heard, and useful to his party." 
So far as we now can judge, this seems a very correct es- 
timate of Wyndham's Parliamentary capacity and position. 
He had a noble presence, singularly graceful and charm- 
ing manners, and a high personal character. A combina- 
tion between such a man as Pulteney and such a man as 
Wyndham could not but be formidable even to the most 
powerful minister. 

Shippen,the leader of the Jacobites — " honest Shippen," 
as Pope calls him — we have often met already. He was 
a straightforward, unselfish man, absolutely given up to 
his principles and his party. He was well read, and had 
written clever pamphlets and telling satirical verses. Ilia 
speeches, or such reports of them as can be got at, are 
full of striking passages and impressive phrases ; they 
are speeches which even now one cannot read without 
interest. But it would seem that Shippen often marred 
the effect of his ideas and his language by a rapid, care- 
less, and imperfect delivery. He appears to have been 
one of the men who wanted nothing but a clear articula- 
tion and effective utterance to be great Parliamentary de- 
baters, and whom that single want condemned to compar- 
ative failure. Those who remember the late Sir George 
Cornewall Lewis, or, indeed, those who have heard the 
best speeches of Lord Sherbrooke, when he was Mr. Rob- 
ert Lowe, can probably form a good idea of what Shippen 
was as a Parliamentary debater. Shippen was nothing 
of a statesman, and his occasional eccentricities of manner 
and conduct prevented him from obtaining all the influ- 
ence which would otherwise have been fairly due to his 
talents and his political and personal integrity. 

Pulteney's party had in Parliament the frequent, in- 
deed for a time the habitual, assistance of Wyndham and 
of Shippen. Outside Parliament Bolingbroke intrigued, 
wrote, and worked with the indomitable energy and rest- 
less craving for activity and excitement which, despite 
all his professions of love for philosophic quiet, had been 
his life -long characteristic. The Craftsman was stimu- 
lated and guided much more directly by his inspiration 
than even by that of Pulteney. The Craftsman kept 
showering out articles, letters, verses, epigrams, all intend- 
ed to damage the ministry, and more especially to destroy 
the reputation of Walpole. All was fish that came into 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



75 



the Craftsman's net. Every step taken by the Govern- 
ment, no matter what it might be, was made an occa- 
sion for ridicule, denunciation, and personal abuse. Not 
the slightest scruple was shown in the management of 
the Draftsman. If the policy of the Government seemed 
to tend towards a Continental war, the Craftsman cried 
out for peace, and vituperated the minister who dared to 
think of involving England in the trumpery quarrels of 
foreign States. Walpole, however, we need hardly say, 
made it a set purpose of his administration to maintain 
peace on the Continent; and as soon as the patriots began 
to find out in each particular instance that his policy was 
still the same, they turned round and shrieked against 
the minister whose feebleness and cowardice were laying 
England at the feet of foreign alliances and Continental 
despots. Walpole worked in cordial alliance with the 
French Government, the principal member of which was 
now Cardinal Fleury. It became the object of the Crafts- 
man to hold Walpole up to contempt and derision, as 
the dupe of a French cardinal and the sycophant of a 
French Court. The example of the Craftsman was speed- 
ily followed by pamphleteers, caricaturists, satirists, and 
even ballad-mongers without end. London and the prov- 
inces were flooded with such literature. Walpole was 
described as "Sir Blue String," the blue string being a 
cheap satirical allusion to the blue ribbon which was sup- 
posed to adorn him as Knight of the Garter. He was 
styled Sir Robert Brass, Sir Robert Lynn, more often 
simple " Robin " or plain "Bob." He was pictured as a 
systematic promoter of public corruption, as one who fat- 
tened on the taxation wrung from the miserable English 
taxpayer. His personal character, his domestic life, his 
household expenses, the habits of his wife, his own social 
and other enjoyments, were coarsely criticised and lam- 
pooned. The Craftsman and its imitators attacked not 
only Walpole himself, but Walpole's friends. The politi- 
cal satire of that day was as indiscriminate as it was un- 
sparing. It was enough to be a political or even a per- 
sonal friend of Walpole to become the object of the 
Craftsman 's fierce blows. Pulteney did not even scruple 
to betray the confidence of private conversation, and to 
disclose the words which, in some unguarded moments 
of former friendship, Walpole had spoken of George the 
Second when George was Prince of Wales. 

An excellent opportunity was soon given to Pulteney 
to make an open and a damaging attack on the minis- 
try. Horace Walpole, British Ambassador to the French 
Court, had been brought over from Paris to explain and 
justify his brother's foreign policy. The Government 
put forward a resolution in the House of Commons on 
February 7, 1729, for a grant of some two hundred and 
fifty thousand pounds "for defraying the expense of 
twelve thousand Hessians taken into his Majesty's pay." 
Even if the maintenance of this force had been a positive 
necessity, which it certainly was not, it would, neverthe- 
less, have been a necessity bringing with it disparage- 
ment and danger to the Government responsible for it. 
Pulteney made the most of the opportunity, and in a 
speech of fine old English flavor denounced the proposal 
of the ministers. He asked with indignation whether 
Englishmen were not brave enough or willing enough 
to defend their own country without calling in the as- 
sistance of foreign mercenaries. It might, he admitted, 
be some advantage to Hanover that German soldiers 
should be kept in the pay of England, but he wanted to 
know what benefit could come to the English people from 
paying and maintaining such a band. These men were 
kept, he declared, in the pay of England, not for the ser- 
vice of England, but for the service of Hanover. It 
need hardly be said that, during all the earlier years of 
the Brunswick accession, a bare allusion to the name of 
Hanover was enough to stir an angry feeling in the minds 
of the larger number of the English people. Even the 
very men who most loyally supported the House of 



Brunswick winced and writhed under any allusion to the 
manner in which the interests of England were made 
subservient to the interests of Hanover. Pulteney there- 
fore took every pains to chafe those sore places with 
remorseless energy. Sir William Wyndham supported 
Pulteney, and Sir Robert Walpole himself found it nec- 
essary to throw all his influence into the scale on the 
other side. His arguments were of a kind with which 
the House of Commons has been familiar during many 
generations. His main point was, that by maintaining a 
large body of soldiers, Hessian among the rest, the coun- 
try had been enabled to avoid war. The Court of Vienna, 
with the assistance of Spanish subsidies, had been making 
preparation for war, Walpole contended; and were it not 
for the maintenance of this otherwise superfluous body 
of troops, the Emperor of Austria would probably never 
have accepted the terms of peace. " If you desire peace, 
prepare for war," may be an excellent maxim, but its 
value lies a good deal in its practical application. It is 
a remarkably elastic maxim, and in times nearer to our 
own than those of Walpole has been made to expand 
into a justification of the most extravagant and unneces- 
sary military armaments and of schemes of fortification 
which afterwards were abandoned before they had been 
half realized. In this instance, however, there was some- 
thing more to be said against the proposal of the Gov- 
ernment. Some of the speakers in the debate pointed 
out that England in former days, if it engaged in a quar- 
rel with its neighbors, fought the quarrel out with its 
own strength, and was not in the habit of buying and 
maintaining the forces of foreign princes to help English- 
men to hold their own. The resolution, of course, was 
carried. It was even carried by an overwhelming ma- 
jority : 256 were on the "court side," as it was called, 
against 91 on the " country side." Fifty thousand pounds 
was also voted as " one year's subsidy to the King of 
Sweden," and twenty-five thousand pounds for one year's 
subsidy to the Duke of Brunswick. In order, however, 
to appease the consciences of some of those who sup- 
ported the resolution as well as those who had opposed 
it, the Government permitted what we should now call 
a "nder" to be added to the resolution requesting his 
Majesty that whenever it should be necessary to take any 
foreign troops into his service, " he will be graciously 
pleased to use his endeavors that they be clothed with 
the manufactures of Great Britain." It was supposed to 
be some solace to the wounded national pride of English- 
men to be assured that if they had to pay foreigners to 
fight for them, the foreigners should at least not be al- 
lowed to come to this country clothed in the manufact- 
ures of their own land, but would be compelled to buy 
their garments over the counter of an English shop. 

On Friday, February 21st, an event which led directly 
and indirectly to results of some importance occurred. 
Three petitions from the merchants trading in tobacco 
In London, Bristol, and Liverpool were presented to the 
House of Commons. These petitions complained of great 
interruptions for several years past of the trade with the 
British colonies in America by the Spaniards. The dep- 
redations of the Spanish, it was said, endangered the en- 
tire loss of that valuable trade to England. The Span- 
iards were accused of having treated such of his Majesty's 
subjects as had fallen into their hands in a barbarous and 
cruel manner. The petitioners prayed for the consider- 
ation of the House of Commons, and such timely remedy 
as the House should think fit to recommend. These peti- 
tions only preceded a great many others, all in substance 
to the same effect. The Commons entered upon the con- 
sideration of the subject in a Committee of the whole 
House, heard several petitioners, and examined many wit- 
nesses. An address was presented to the Crown, asking 
for copies of all memorials, petitions, and representations 
to the late King or the present, in relation to Spanish 
captures of British ships. Copies were also asked for 



76 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



of the reports laid before the King by the Commission- 
ers of Trade and of Plantations, concerning the dispute 
between England and Spain, with regard to the rights of 
the subjects of Great Britain to cut logwood in the Bay 
of Campeachy, on the western shore of that Yucatan 
peninsula which juts into the Gulf of Mexico. English 
traders had been for a long time in the habit of cutting 
logwood along the shores in the Bay of Campeachy, and 
the logwood trade had come to be one of the greatest 
importance to the West Indies and to England. The 
Spanish Government claimed the right to put a stop to 
this cutting of logwood, and the Spanish Viceroy and 
Governor had in some instances declared that they would 
dislodge the Englishmen from the settlements which they 
had established, and even treat them as pirates if they 
persisted in their trade. There was, in fact, all the ma- 
terial growing up for a serious quarrel between England 
and Spain. 

Despite the recent treaties which were supposed to 
secure the peace of Europe, the times were very critical. 
" The British nation," says a contemporary writer, " had 
for many years past been in a state of uncertainty, scarce 
knowing friends from foes, or indeed whether we had 
either." Each new treaty seemed only to disturb the 
balance of power, as it was called, in a new way. The 
Quadruple Alliance was intended to rectify the defects 
of the Treaty of Utrecht ; but it gave too much power 
to the Emperor, and it increased the bitterness and the 
discontent of the King of Spain. The Treaty of Vienna, 
made between the Empire and Spain, was justly regarded 
in England as portending danger to this country. It was 
even more dangerous than Englishmen in general sup- 
posed at the time, although Walpole knew its full pur- 
port and menace. The Treaty of Vienna led to the Treaty 
of Hanover, an arrangement made in the closing years 
of George the First's reign between Great Britain, France, 
and Prussia, by virtue of which if any one of the con- 
tracting parties were to be attacked, the other two were 
pledged to come to the assistance with funds and with 
arms. All these arrangements were in the highest de- 
gree artificial ; some of them might fairly be described 
as unnatural. It might be taken for granted that not 
one of the States whom they professed to bind to this 
side or to that would hold to the engagements one hour 
longer than would serve her own interests. No safety 
was secured by these overlapping treaties ; no one had 
any faith in them. It was quite true that England did 
not know her friends from her enemies about the time at 
which we have now arrived. 

The dispute between England and Spain concerning 
the question of the Campeachy logwood was to involve 
a controversy as to the interpretation of certain passages 
in the Treaty of Utrecht. It was distinctly a matter for 
calm consideration, for compromise, and for an amicable 
settlement. But each of the two parties mainly con- 
cerned showed its desire to push its own claim to an 
extreme. English traders have never been particularly 
moderate or considerate in pressing their supposed rights 
to trade with foreign countries. In this instance they 
were strongly backed up, encouraged, and stimulated by 
the band of Englishmen who chose to call themselves 
"The Patriots." Few of the "Patriots," we venture to 
think, cand a rush about the question of the Campeachy 
logwood, or were very deeply grieved because Spain bore 
herself in a high-handed fashion towards certain English 
merchants and ship-owners. But the opportunity seemed 
to the " Patriots " admirably adapted for worrying and 
harassing, not the Spaniards, but the administration of 
Sir Robert Walpole. They used the opportunity to the 
very full. The debates on the conduct of Spain brought 
out in the House of Lords the acknowledgment of the 
fact that King George I. had at one time actually written 
to the Government of Spain, distinctly undertaking to 
bring about the restitution of Gibraltar. A copy of the 



letter in French, with a translation, was laid before the 
House. It seemed that on June 1, 1721, George, the 
late King, wrote to the King of Spain, "Sir, my brother," 
a letter concerning the treaties then in the course of be- 
ing re-established between England and Spain. In that 
letter occurred these words : " I do no longer balance to 
assure your Majesty of my readiness to satisfy you with 
regard to your demand touching the restitution of Gib- 
raltar ; promising you to make use of the first favorable 
opportunity to regulate this article with the consent of 
my Parliament." The House of Lords had a long and 
warm debate on this subject. A resolution was proposed, 
declaring that " for the honor of his Majesty, and the 
preservation and security of the trade and commerce of 
this kingdom," care should be taken " that the King of 
Spain do renounce all claim and pretension to Gibraltar 
and the island of Minorca, in plain and strong terms." 
This resolution, however, was thought in the end to be 
rather too strong, and it was modified into a declaration 
that the Lords "do entirely rely upon his Majesty, that 
he will, for the maintaining the honor and securing the 
trade of this kingdom, take effectual care in the present 
treaty to preserve his undoubted right to Gibraltar and 
the island of Minorca." This resolution was communi- 
cated to the House of Commons, and the Lords asked 
for a conference with that House in the Painted Cham- 
ber. The Commons had a long debate on the subject. 
The Opposition strongly denounced the ministers who 
had advised the late King to write such a letter, and de- 
clared that it implied a positive promise to surrender Gib- 
raltar to Spain. The courtiers, as the supporters of the 
Ministry were then called, to distinguish them from the 
country party — that is to say, the Opposition — endeavored 
to qualify and make light of the expressions used in the 
late King's letter, to show that they were merely hypo- 
thetical and conditional, and insisted that effectual care 
had since been taken in every way to maintain the right 
of England to Gibraltar. The country party moved that 
words be added to the Lords' resolution requiring " that 
all pretensions on the part of the Crown of Spain to the 
said places be specifically given up." Two hundred and 
sixty-seven votes against one hundred and eleven re- 
fused the addition of these words as unnecessary, and 
too much in the nature of a challenge and defiance to 
Spain. But the motion that " this House does agree with 
the Lords in the said resolution " was carried without 
a division, the Court party not venturing to offer any 
objection to it. The King received the address of both 
Houses on Tuesday, March 25th, and returned an answer 
thanking them for the confidence reposed in him, and 
assuring them that " I will take effectual care, as I have 
hitherto done, to secure my undoubted right to Gibraltar 
and the island of Minorca." 

The difficulty was over for the present. The Govern- 
ment contrived to arrange a new treaty with Spain, the 
Treaty of Seville, in which France also was included. 
This treaty settled for the time the disputes about Eng- 
lish trade with the New World, and the claims of Spain 
for a restoration of Gibraltar were, indirectly at least, 
given up. Perhaps the whole story is chiefly interest- 
ing now as affording an illustration of the manner in 
which the Patriots turned everything to account for 
their one great purpose of harassing the administration 
of Sir Robert Walpole. All the patriotic effusiveness 
about the undoubted right of England to Gibraltar was 
merely well- painted passion. Such sentiment as exists 
in the English mind with regard to the possession of 
"the Rock" now, did not exist, had not had time to come 
into existence, then. Gibraltar was taken in 1704; its 
possession was confirmed to England by the Treaty of 
Utrecht in 1713. Since that time English Ministers had 
again and again been considering the expediency of re- 
storing Gibraltar to the Spaniards. Stanhope had been 
in favor of the restoration ; Townshend and Carteret 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



77 



bad been in favor of it. Some of the Patriots them- 
selves, before they came to be dubbed Patriots, had been 
in favor of it. Only the unreasonable and insolent be- 
havior of Spain herself stood at one time in the way of 
the restitution. Gibraltar was one capture, like many 
others ; captured territory changed and changed hands 
with each new arrangement in those days. Minorca, 
which was included with Gibraltar in the resolution 
of the two Houses of Parliament and the consequent 
promise of the King, was taken by the English forces 
shortly after the capture of Gibraltar, and was settled 
upon England by the same Treaty of Utrecht. Yet, as 
we all know, it was given up by England at the peace of 
Amiens, and no tears of grief were shed by any English 
eyes. But the discovery that the late King had at one 
time been willing to restore Gibraltar to Spain for a con- 
sideration came in most opportunely for the Patriots. To 
most of them it was, of course, no discovery at all. They 
had always known of the intention, and some of them had 
approved of it. None the less shrill were their cries of 
surprise ; none the less vociferous their shouts of patri- 
otic anger. 

CHAPTER XX. 

A VICTORY FOR THE PATRIOTS. 

Literature lost some great names in the early part of 
George the Second's reign. William Congreve and Rich- 
ard Steele both died in 1729. Congreve's works do not 
belong to the time of which we are writing. He was not 
sixty years old when he died, and he had long ceased to 
take any active part in literature. Swift deplores, in a 
letter to an acquaintance, "the death of our friend Mr. 
Congreve, whom I loved from my youth, and who surely, 
besides his other talents, was a very agreeable compan- 
ion." Swift adds that Congreve "had the misfortune to 
squander away a very good constitution in his younger 
days," and " upon his own account I could not much de- 
sire the continuance of his life under so much pain and 
so many infirmities." Congreve was beyond comparison 
the greatest English comic dramatist of his time. Since 
the days of Ben Jonson and until the days of Sheridan 
there was no one who could fairly be compared with him. 
His comedy was not in the least like the bold, broad, 
healthy, Aristophanic humor of Ben Jonson ; the two 
stand better in contrast than in comparison. Jonson drew 
from the whole living English world of his time ; Con- 
greve drew from the men and women whom he had seen 
in society. Congreve took society as he found it in his 
earlier days. The men and women with whom he then 
mixed were for the most part flippant, insincere, corrupt, 
and rather proud of their corruption ; and Congreve filled 
his plays with figures very lifelike for such a time. He 
has not drawn many men or women whom one could ad- 
mire. Even his heroines, if they are chaste in their lives, 
are anything but pure in their conversation, and seem to 
have no moral principle beyond that which is represented 
by what Heine calls an " anatomical chastity." Angelica, 
the heroine of " Love for Love," is evidently meant by 
Congreve to be all that a charming young Englishwoman 
ought to be ; and she is charming, fresh, and fascinating 
even still. But she occasionally talks in a manner which 
would be a little strong for a barrack -room now; and 
nothing gives her more genuine delight than to twit her 
kind, fond old uncle with his wife's infidelities, to make 
it clear to him that all the world is acquainted with the 
full particulars of his shame, and to sport with his jealous 
agonies. Congreve was the first dramatic author who 
put an English seaman on the stage ; and, after his char- 
acteristic fashion, he made his Ben Legend a selfish, 
coarse, and ruffianly lout. But if one cannot admire 
many of Congreve's characters, on the other hand one 
cannot help admiring every sentence they speak. The 
only fault to be found with their talk is that it is too 
witty, too brilliant, for any manner of real life. Society 



would have to be all composed of male and female Con- 
greves to make such conversation possible. There is 
more strength, originality, and depth in it than even in 
the conversation in "The Rivals "and "The School for 
Scandal." The same fault has been found with Sheridan 
which is to be found with Congreve. We need not make 
too much of it. No warning example is called for. 
There will never be many dramatists whose dialogue will 
deserve the censure of critics on the ground that it is too 
witty. 

Of Steele we have often had occasion to speak. His 
fame has been growing rather than fading with time. At 
one period he was ranked by critics as far below the level 
of Addison ; few men now would not set him on a pedestal 
as high. He was more natural, more simple, more fresh 
than Addison. There is some justice in the remark of 
Hazlitt that "Steele seems to have gone into his closet 
chiefly to set down what he had observed out-of-doors ;" 
while Addison appears "to have spent most of his time 
in his study," spinning out to the utmost there the hints 
" which he borrowed from Steele or took from nature." 
Every one, however, will cordially say with Hazlitt, " I 
am far from wishing to depreciate Addison's talents, but 
I am anxious to do justice to Steele." There are not 
many names in English literature round which a greater 
affection clings than that of Steele. Leigh Hunt, in writ- 
ing of Congreve, speaks of " the love of the highest aspira- 
tions " which he sometimes displays, and which makes us 
think of what he might have been under happier and 
purer auspices. Leigh Hunt refers in especial to Con- 
greve's essay in the Tatler on the character of Lady Eliza- 
beth Hastings, whom Congreve calls Aspasia — " an effu- 
sion so full of enthusiasm for the moral graces, and worded 
with an appearance of sincerity so cordial, that we can 
never read it without thinking it must have come from 
Steele." " It is in this essay," Leigh Hunt goes on, " that 
he says one of the most elegant and truly loving things 
that were ever uttered by an unworldly passion : ' To love 
her is a liberal education.'" Leigh Hunt's critical judg- 
ment was better than his information. The words " to 
love her is a liberal education " are by Steele, and not by 
Congreve. They do not appear in the essay by Congreve 
on the character of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, but in a 
subsequent essay by Steele, in which, after a fashion com- 
mon enough in the Tatler and the Sinectator, one author 
takes up some figure created or described by another, and 
gives it new touches and commends it afresh to the reader. 
Steele was doing this with Congreve's picture of Aspasia, 
and it was then that he crowned the whole work by the 
exquisite and immortal words which Leigh Hunt could 
never read without thinking they must have come from 
the man who was in fact their author. 

If literature had its losses in these years, it had also its 
gains. Not long before the time at which we have now 
arrived English literature had achieved three great suc- 
cesses. Pope wrote the first three books of his " Dun- 
ciad," Swift published his " Gulliver's Travels," and Gay 
set the town wild with his "Beggar's Opera." We are 
far from any thought of classifying the " Beggar's Ope- 
ra "as a work of art on a level with the "Dunciad" or 
" Gulliver's Travels," but in its way it is a masterpiece. 
It is thoroughly original, fresh, and vivid. It added one 
or two distinctly new figures to the humorous drama. It 
is clever as a satire and charming as a story. One cannot 
be surprised that when it had the attraction of novelty 
the public raved about it. To say anything about " Gul- 
liver's Travels " or the " Dunciad," except to note the his- 
torical fact that each was published, would of course be 
mere superfluity and waste of words. 

In 1731 the first steps were taken in a reform of some 
importance in the liberation of our legal procedure. It 
was arranged that English should be substituted for Latin 
in the presentments, indictments, pleadings, and all other 
documents used in our courts of law. The early stages of 



78 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



this most wise and needful reform were met with much 
opposition by lawyers and pedants. One main argument 
employed in favor of the retention of the old system was 
that, if the language of our legal documents were to be 
changed, no man would be at the pains of studying Latin 
any more, and that in a few years no one would be able to 
read a word of some of our own most valuable historical 
records. It was mildly suggested on the other side that 
there would always be some men among us who " either 
out of curiosity, or for the sake of gain," would make it 
their business to keep up the knowledge of Latin, and 
that a very few of such antiquarians would suffice to give 
the country all the information drawn from Latin records 
which it could possibly require or care to have. We 
have had some experience since that time, and it does 
not appear that the disuse of Latin in our legal docu- 
ments has led to its falling into absolute disuse among 
reading men. There are still among us, and apparently 
will always be, persons who, " either out of curiosity, or 
for the sake of gain," keep up their knowledge of Latin. 
The curiosity to read Virgil and Horace and Cicero and 
Ciesar, in the tongue which those authors employed, is 
more keen than it ever was before. Men indulge them- 
selves freely in it, even without reference to the sake of 
gain. 

Meanwhile a change long foreseen by those who were 
in the inner political circles was rapidly approaching. 
The combination between Walpole and his brother-in- 
law, Lord Townshend, was about to be broken up. It 
had for a long time been a question whether it was to 
be the firm of Townshend and Walpole, or Walpole and 
Townshend ; and of late years the question was becom- 
ing settled. If the firm was to endure at all, it must 
clearly be Walpole and Townshend. Walpole had been 
growing every day in power and influence. The King, 
as well as the Queen, treated him openly and privately 
as the head of the Government. Townshend saw this, 
and felt bitterly aggrieved. He had for a long time 
been a much more powerful personage socially than Wal- 
pole, and he could not bear with patience the supremacy 
which Walpole was all too certainly obtaining. Great 
part of that supremacy was due to AValpole's superiority 
of talents ; but something was due also to the fact that 
the House of Commons was becoming a much more im- 
portant assembly than the House of Lords. The result 
was inevitable. Townshend for a long time struggled 
against it. He tried to intrigue against Walpole ; he 
did his best to ingratiate himself with the King. He 
was a man of austere character and stainless life ; but he 
seems, nevertheless, to have tried at one time the merest 
arts of the political intriguer to supplant his brother-in- 
law in the favor and confidence of the King. Perhaps 
he might have succeeded — it is at least possible — but for 
the watchful intelligence of Queen Caroline. She saw 
through all Townshend's schemes, and took care that they 
should not succeed. At last the two rivals quarrelled. 
Their quarrel broke out very openly, in the drawing-room 
of a lady, and in the presence of several distinguished 
persons. From hot words they were going on to a pos- 
itive personal struggle, when the spectators at last inter- 
vened to "pluck them asunder," in the words of the King 
in " Hamlet." They were plucked asunder, and then there 
was talk of a duel. The friends of both succeeded in 
preventing this scandal, but the brothers -in-law were 
never thoroughly reconciled, and after a short time Lord 
Townshend resigned his office. He withdrew from pub- 
lic life altogether, and devoted his remaining years to 
the enjoyment of the country and the cultivation of 
agriculture. It is to his credit that when once he bad 
given way to the superior influence of Walpole, he did 
not afterwards cabal against him, or try to injure him, 
according to the fashion of the statesmen of the time. 
On the contrary, when he was once pressed to join in an 
attack on Walpole's ministry, he firmly refused to do any- 



thing of the kind. He said he had resolved to take no 
further part in political contests, and he did not mean 
to break his resolution. He was particularly determined 
not to depart from his resolve in this case, he explained, 
because his temper was hot, and he was apprehensive that 
he might be hurried away by personal resentment to take 
a course which in his cooler moments he should have to 
regret. Nothing in his public life, perhaps, became him 
so well as his dignified conduct in his retirement. His 
place in history is not strongly marked ; in this history 
we shall rot hear of him any more. 

Colonel Stanhope, who had made the Treaty of Sev- 
ille, and had been raised to the peerage as Lord Har- 
rington for his services, succeeded Townshend as Secre- 
tary of State. Horace Walpole, the brother of Robert, 
was at his own request recalled from Paris. Walpole, 
the Prime-minister, had begun to see that it would be nec- 
essary for the future to have something like a good un- 
derstanding with Austria. The friendship with France had 
been a priceless advantage in its time, but Walpole be- 
lieved that it had served its turn. It was valuable to Eng- 
land chiefly because it had enabled the Sovereign to keep 
the movements of the Stuart party in check, and Walpole 
hoped that the House of Hanover was now secure on 
the throne, and believed, with too sanguine a confidence,, 
that no other effort would be made to disturb it. More- 
over, he saw some reason to think that France, no longer 
guided by the political intelligence of a man like the 
Duke of Orleans, was drawing a little too close in her 
relationship with Spain. Walpole was already looking 
forward to the coming of a time when it might be nec- 
essary for England to strengthen herself against France 
and Spain, and he therefore desired to get into a good 
understanding with the Emperor and Austria. 

Walpole now had the Government entirely to himself. 
He was not merely all - powerful in the administration, 
he actually was the administration. The King knew him 
to be indispensable ; the Queen put the fullest trust in 
him. His only trouble was with the intrigues of Boling- 
broke and the opposition of Pulteney. The latter some- 
times affected what would have been called at the time 
a "mighty unconcern" about political affairs. Writing 
once to Pope, he says, " Mrs. Pulteney is now in labor ; 
if she does well, and brings me a boy, I shall not care one 
sixpence how much longer Sir Robert governs England, 
or Horace governs France." This was written while 
Horace Walpole was still Ambassador at the French 
Court. Pulteney, however, was very far from feeling 
anything like the philosophical indifference which he 
expressed in his letter to Pope. He never ceased to at- 
tack everything done by the Ministry, and to satirize 
every word said by Walpole. At the same time Pulte- 
ney was complaining bitterly to his friends of the attacks 
made on him by the supporters of Walpole. On Febru- 
ary 9, 1730, he wrote a letter to Swift, in which he says 
that " certain people " had been driven by want of argu- 
ment "to that last resort of calling names: villain, traitor, 
seditious rascal, and such ingenious appellations have fre- 
quently been bestowed on a couple of friends of yours." 
"Such usage," he complacently adds, "has made it nec- 
essary to return the same polite language; and there has 
been more Billingsgate stuff uttered from the press with- 
in these two months than ever was known before." 
Swift himself had previously written to his friend Dr. 
Sheridan a letter in which he declared that " Walpole is 
peevish and disconcerted, stoops to the vilest offices of 
hireling scoundrels to write Billingsgate of the lowest 
and most prostitute kind, and has none but beasts and 
blockheads for his penmen, whom he pays in ready guin- 
eas very liberally." One would have thought that beasts 
and blockheads could hardly prove very formidable ene- 
mies to Swift and Bolingbroke and Pulteney. 

One of the incidents in the controversy carried on by 
the Ministerial penmen and the Craftsman was a duel 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



79 



between Pulteney and Lord Hervey. Pulteney and his 
friends were apparently under the impression that they 
had a right to a monopoly of personal abuse, and they re- 
sented any effusion of the kind from the other side as a 
breach of their privilege. Hervey had written a tract 
called "Sedition and Defamation displayed, in a Letter 
to the Author of the Craftsman. ;" and this led to a new 
outburst of passion on both sides. Pulteney stigmatized 
Hervey, on account of his effeminate appearance, as a 
thing that was half man, half woman, and a duel took 
place in which Hervey was wounded. Hervey was a re- 
markable man. His physical frame was as feeble as that 
of Voltaire. He suffered from epilepsy and a variety of 
other ailments. He had to live mainly on a dietary of 
ass's milk. II is face was so meagre and so pallid, or rath- 
er livid, that he used to paint and make up like an actress 
or a fine lady. Pope, who might have been considerate 
to the weak of frame, was merciless in his ridicule of Her- 
vey. He ridiculed him as Sporus, who could neither feel 
satire nor sense, and as Lord Fanny. Yet Hervey could 
appreciate satire and sense ; could write satire and sense. 
He was a man of very rare capacity. He had already dis- 
tinguished himself as a debater in the House of Com- 
mons, and was afterwards to distinguish himself as a de- 
bater in the House of Lords. He wrote pretty verses and 
clever pamphlets, and he has left to the world a collection 
of " Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second," which 
will always be read for its vivacity, its pungency, its bit- 
terness, and its keen, penetrating good -sense. Hervey 
succeeded in obtaining the hand of one of the most beau- 
tiful women of the day, the charming Mary Lepell, whose 
name has been celebrated in more than one poetical pane- 
gyric by Pope, and he captivated the heart of one of the 
royal princesses. The historical reader must strike a sort 
of balance for himself in getting at an estimate of Her- 
vey's character. No man has been more bitterly de- 
nounced by his enemies or more warmly praised by his 
friends. Affectation, insincerity, prodigality, selfishness, 
servility to the great, contempt for the humble, are among 
the qualities his opponents ascribe to him. According to 
his friends, his cynicism was a mere affectation to hide a 
sensitive and generous nature ; his bitterness arose from 
his disappointment at finding so few men or women who 
came up to a really high standard of nobleness ; his hom- 
age of the great was but the half -disguised mockery of a 
scornful philosopher. Probably the picture drawn by the 
friends is on the whole more near to life than that painted 
by the enemies. The world owes him some thanks for a 
really interesting book, the very boldness and bitterness 
of which enhance to a certain extent its historical value. 
At this time Hervey was but little over thirty years of 
age. He was the son of the first Earl of Bristol by a 
second marriage, had been educated at Westminster 
School and at Clare Hall, Cambridge; had gone early 
through the usual round of Continental travels, and be- 
came a friend of George the First's grandson, now Prince 
of Wales, at Hanover. This friendship not merely did 
not endure but soon turned into hate. Hervey was an 
admirer of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and was ad- 
mired by her ; but her own assurances, which may be 
trusted to, declared that there had been nothing warmer 
than friendship between them. Lady Mary afterwards 
maintained that the relationship between Hervey and her 
established the possibility of " a long and steady friend- 
ship subsisting between two persons of different sexes 
without the least admixture of love." Hervey was in 
his day a somewhat free and liberal lover of women, and 
it is not surprising that the world should have regarded 
his acquaintanceship with Lady Mary as something warm- 
er than mere friendship. We shall have occasion to re- 
fer to Hervey's memoirs of the reign of George the Sec- 
ond more than once hereafter, and may perhaps now cite 
a few words which Hervey himself says in vindication of 
their sincerity and their historical accuracy : 



" No one who did not live in these times will, I dare 
say, believe but some of those I describe in these papers 
must have had some hard features and deformities ex- 
aggerated and heightened by the malice and ill-nature of 
the painter who drew them. Others, perhaps, will say 
that at least no painter is obliged to draw every wart or 
wen or humpback in its full proportions, and that I 
might have softened these blemishes where I found them. 
But I am determined to report everything just as it is, or 
at least just as it appears to me ; and those who have a 
curiosity to see courts and courtiers dissected, must bear 
with the dirt they find in laying open such minds with as 
little nicety and as much patience as, in a dissection of 
their bodies, if they wanted to see that operation, they 
must submit to the disgust." 

Hervey fought with spirit and effect on the side of 
Walpole, although Lady Hervey strongly disliked the 
Minister and was disliked by him. Walpole had at one 
time, it was said, made unsuccessful love to the beautiful 
and witty Molly Lepell, and he did not forgive her be- 
cause of her scornful rejection of his ponderous attempts 
at gallantry. Hervey, nevertheless, took Walpole's side, 
and proved to be an ally of some importance. A great 
struggle was approaching, in which the whole strength of 
Walpole's hold on the Sovereign and the country was to 
be tested by the severest strain. 

Walpole was, as we have said more than once, the first 
of the great financier statesmen of England. He was the 
first statesman who properly appreciated the virtue and 
the value of mere economy in the disposal of a nation's 
revenues. He was the first to devise anything like a solid 
and symmetrical plan for the fair adjustment of taxation. 
Sometimes he had recourse to rather poor and common- 
place artifices, as in the case of his proposal to meet a 
certain financial strain by borrowing half a million from 
the Sinking Fund. This proposal he carried by a large 
majority, in spite of the most vehement and even furious 
opposition on the part of the Patriots. It must be owned 
that the Patriots were right enough in the principle of 
their objection to this encroachment on the Sinking Fund, 
although their predictions as to the ruin it must bring 
upon the country were preposterous. Borrowing from 
a sinking fund is always rather a shabby dodge ; but it 
is a trick familiar to all statesmen in difficulties, and Wal- 
pole did no worse than many statesmen of later days, who, 
with the full advantages of a sound and well-developed 
financial system, have shown that they were not able to 
do any better. 

The Patriots seem to have made up their minds to earn 
their title. They fought the " Court," or Ministerial, 
party on a variety of issues. They supported motions for 
the reduction of the numbers of the army, and they de- 
claimed against the whole principle of a standing army 
with patriotic passion, which sometimes appeared for the 
time quite genuine. They, brought illustrations of all 
kinds, applicable and inapplicable, from Greek and Ro- 
man, from French and Spanish history, even from Eastern 
history, to show that a standing army was invariably the 
instrument of despotism and the forerunner of doom to 
the liberties of a people. The financial policy of the Gov- 
ernment gave them frequent opportunities for using the 
sword of the partisan behind the fluttering cloak of the 
patriot. On both sides of the House there was consider- 
able confusion of ideas on the subject of political economy 
and the incidence of taxation. Walpole was ahead of his 
own party as well as of his opponents on such subjects ; 
his followers were little more enlightened than his an- 
tagonists. 

In 1732 there was presented to the House of Commons 
an interesting report from the Commissioners for Trade 
and Plantations on "the state of his Majesty's colonies 
and plantations in America, with respect to any laws 
made, manufactures set up, and trade carried on there, 
which may affect the trade, navigation, and manufactures 



80 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



of this kingdom." From this report we learn that at the 
time there were three different systems of government pre- 
vailing in the American colonies. Some provinces were 
immediately under the administration of the Crown : 
these were Nova Scotia, New Hampshire, the Jerseys, 
New York, Virginia, the two Carolinas, Bermuda, Ba- 
hama Islands, Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the Leeward Isl- 
ands. Others were vested in proprietors — Pennsylvania, 
for example, and Maryland — and the Bahamas and the 
two Carolinas had not long before been in the same con- 
dition. There were three Charter Governments, Massa- 
chusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, in which the 
power was divided between the Crown and the popula- 
tion, where the people chose their representative assem- 
blies, and the Governor was dependent upon the Assembly 
for his annual support, " which," as the report observed 
ingenuously, " has so frequently laid the Governor of 
such a province under temptations of giving up the pre- 
rogative of the Crown and the interest of Great Britain." 
The report contains a very full account of the state of 
manufactures in all the provinces. New York, for ex- 
ample, had no manufactures " that deserved mentioning;" 
the trade there " consisted chiefly in furs, whalebone, oil, 
pitch, tar, and provisions." In Massachusetts " the in- 
habitants worked up their wool and flax, and made an 
ordinary coarse cloth for their own use, but did not ex- 
port any." In Pennsylvania the " chief trade lay in the 
exportation of provisions and lumber," and there were 
"no manufactures established, their clothing and utensils 
for their houses being all imported from Great Britain." 
For the object of the whole report was not to discover 
how far the energy of the colonists was developing the 
resources of the colonies, in order that the Government 
and the people of England might be gratified with a 
knowledge of the progress made, and give their best en- 
couragement to further progress. The inquiry was set 
on foot in order to find out whether the colonists were 
presuming to manufacture for themselves any goods 
which they ought by right to buy from English makers, 
and to recommend steps by which such audacious enter- 
prises might be rebuked and prevented. This is the 
avowed object of the report, and we find governor after 
governor assuring the Commissioners earnestly and plain- 
tively that the population of his province really manu- 
facture nothing, or at all events nothing that could possi- 
bly interfere with the sacred privileges of the English 
monopolists. The report significantly recommends the 
House of Commons to take into consideration the ques- 
tion "whether it might not be expedient to give these 
colonies proper encouragements for turning their industry 
to such manufactures and products as might be of service 
to Great Britain, and more particularly to the produc- 
tion of all kinds of naval stores." The proper encourage- 
ment given to this sort of productiveness would imply, 
of course, proper discouragement given to anything else. 
The colonies were to exist merely for the convenience 
and benefit of the so-called mother country, a phrase sure- 
ly of sardonic impressiveness. Such, however, was the 
common feeling of that day in England. It was so with 
regard to India ; it was so with regard to Ireland. The 
story of the pelican was reversed. The pelican did not 
in this case feed her young with her blood ; the young 
were expected to give their blood to feed the pelican. 

The real strain was to come when Walpole should in- 
troduce his famous and long-expected scheme for a re- 
form in the customs and excise laws. YValpole's scheme 
was inspired by two central ideas. One of these was to 
diminish the amount of taxation imposed on the land of 
the country, and make up the deficiency by indirect taxa- 
tion; the other was to reduce the customs duties by sub- 
stituting as far as possible an excise duty. Walpole 
would have desired something like free-trade as regarded 
the introduction of food and the raw materials of manu- 
facture. Let these be got into the country as easily and 



freely as possible was his principle, and then let us see 
afterwards how we can adjust the excise duties so as to 
produce the largest amount of revenue with the smallest 
injury to the interest of the consumer, and with the min- 
imum of waste. His design was that the necessaries of 
life and the raw materials of manufacture should remain 
as nearly as possible untaxed, and that the revenue of the 
country should be collected from land and from luxuries. 
We do not mean to say that the plans which Walpole 
presented to the country were faithful in all their details 
to these central ideas. One scheme at least which he laid 
before Parliament was positively at variance with the 
main principles which he had long been trying to estab- 
lish. But in considering the whole controversy between 
him and his opponents, the reader may take it for granted 
that such were the principles by which his financial pol- 
icy was inspired. He had been moving quietly in this 
direction for some time. He had removed the import 
duties from tea, coffee, and chocolate, and made them sub- 
ject to inland or excise duties. In 1732 he revived the 
salt tax. The Bill which was introduced on February 9, 
1732, to accomplish this object, met with a strong opposi- 
tion in both Houses of Parliament. Walpole's speech in 
introducing the motion for the revival of the tax con- 
tained a very clear statement of his financial creed. 
" Where every man contributes a small share, a great sum 
may be raised for the public service without any man's 
being sensible of what he pays ; whereas a small sum 
raised upon a few, lies heavy upon each particular man, 
and is the more grievous in that it is unjust ; for where 
the benefit is mutual, the expense ought to be in com- 
mon." The general principle is unassailable; but Wal- 
pole seems to us to have been quite wrong in his applica- 
tion of it to such an impost as the salt tax. " Of all the 
taxes I ever could think of," he argued, " there is not one 
more general, nor one less felt, than that of the duty upon 
salt." He described it as a "tax that every man in the 
nation contributes to according to his circumstances and 
condition in life." This is exactly what every man does 
not do. The family of the rich man does not by any 
means consume more salt than the family of the poor 
man in proportion to their respective incomes. Pulteney 
knocked Walpole's argument all to pieces in a speech of 
remarkable force and ingenuity even for him. There was 
something honestly pathetic in his appeal on behalf of the 
poor man, whom the duty on salt would touch most nearly. 
The tax, he said, would be at least one shilling a head for 
every man or woman able to work ; to a man with a fam- 
ily it would average four shillings and sixpence a year. 
Such a yearly sum "may be looked upon as a trifle by a 
gentleman of a large estate and easy circumstances, but a 
poor man feels sometimes severely the want of a shilling ; 
many a poor man has for want of a shilling been obliged 
to pawn the only whole coat he had to his back, and has 
never been able to redeem it again. Even a farthing to 
a poor man is a considerable sum ; what shifts do the 
frugal among them make to save even a farthing !" 

Had all Pultene'y's speech been animated by this spirit 
he would have made out an unanswerable case. The ob- 
jection to a salt tax in England then was not so great as 
in India at a later period ; but the principle of the tax 
was undoubtedly bad, while the general principle of Wal- 
pole's finance was undoubtedly good. The question, how- 
ever, was not argued out by Pulteney or any other speak- 
er on his side upon such a ground as the hardship to the 
poor man. The tyranny of an excise system, of any ex- 
cise system, its unconstitutional, despotic, and inquisito- 
rial nature — this was the chief ground of attack. Sir 
William Wyndham sounded the alarm which was soon 
to be followed by a tremendous echo. He declared the 
proposed tax "not only destructive to the trade, but in- 
consistent with the liberties of this nation." The very 
number of the officers who would have to be appointed 
to collect this one tax, who would be named by the Crown 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 



81 



and scattered all over the country, would have immense 
influence on the elections; and this fact alone would give 
a power into the hands of the Crown greater than was 
consistent with the liberties of the people, and " of the 
must dangerous consequence to our happy constitution.'' 
The Bill passed the House of Commons, and was read a 
first time in the House of Lords on March 22d. The sec- 
ond reading was moved on March 27th, and a long debate 
took place. Not the least interesting fact concerning this 
debate was that the leading part in opposition to the Bill 
\vas taken by Lord Carteret, who had returned from his 
Irish Government, and was beginning to show himself 
a pertinacious and a formidable enemy of Walpole and 
his administration. Carteret outshone even Pulteney and 
Wyndham in wholesale and extravagant denunciation of 
the measure. He likened it to the domestic policy of 
Cardinal Richelieu, by which the estates of the nobility 
and gentry were virtually confiscated to the Crown, and 
the liberties of the people were lost. It would place it 
in the power of a wicked administration to reduce the 
English people to the same condition as the people in 
Turkey ; " their only resource will be in mobs and tu- 
mults, and the prevailing party will administer justice 
by general massacres and proscriptions." All this may 
now seem sheer absurdity; but for the purposes of Car- 
teret and Pulteney it was by no means absurd. The salt 
tax was carried through the House of Lords ; but the 
public out-of-doors were taught to believe that the Min- 
ister's financial policy was merely a series of artifices for 
the destruction of popular rights, and for robbing Eng- 
land of her political liberty. 

Walpole had long had in his mind a measure of a dif- 
ferent nature — a measure to readjust the duties on tobacco 
ami wine. It was known that he was preparing some 
bill on the subject, and the excitement which was begin- 
ning to show itself at the time of the salt-tax debates was 
turned to account by the Opposition to forestall the pop- 
ular reception of the expected measure. The cry was 
got up that the administration were planning a scheme 
for a general excise, and the bare idea of a general excise 
was then odious and terrible to the public. Whatever 
Walpole's final purposes may have been, there was noth- 
ing to alarm any one in the scheme which he was pres- 
ently to introduce. Nobody now would think of impugn- 
ing the soundness of the economical principles on which 
his moderate, limited, and tentative scheme of fiscal reform 
was founded. 

The coming event threw its shadow before it, and the 
shadow became marvellously distorted. Pulteney, speak- 
ing on February 23, 1733, with regard to the Sinking Fund 
proposal, talked of the expected excise scheme in language 
of such exaggeration that it is impossible to believe the 
orator could have felt anything like the alarm and horror 
he expressed. There is " a very terrible affair impend- 
ing," Pulteney said, " a monstrous project — yea, more 
monstrous than has ever yet been represented. It is such 
a project as has struck terror into the minds of most gen- 
tlemen within this House, and into the minds of all men 
without-doors who have any regard to the happiness or 
to the constitution of their country. 1 mean that mon- 
ster the excise; that plan of arbitrary power which is ex- 
pected to be laid before this House in the present session 
of Parliament." Sir John Barnard, one of the members 
for the City of London, a man of great respectability, 
capacity, and influence, ventured to predict that Wal- 
pi lie's scheme would "turn out to be his eternal shame 
and dishonor, and that the more the project is examined, 
and the consequences thereof considered, the more the 
projector will be hated and despised." 

Of all this strong language Walpoje took little account. 
He meant to propose his scheme, he said, when the prop- 
er time should come, and he did not doubt but that hon- 
orable members would find it something very different 
from the vague and monstrous project of which they had 



been told. In any case he meant to propose it. Accord- 
ingly, on Wednesday, March 7, 1733, W T alpole moved that 
the House should on that day week resolve itself into a 
committee " to consider of the most proper methods for 
the better security and improvement of the duties and 
revenues already charged upon and payable from tobacco 
and wines." On the day appointed, Wednesday, March 
14th, the House went into committee accordingly, and 
Walpole expounded his scheme. It was simply a plan 
to deal with the duties on wines and tobacco, and Wal- 
pole protested that his views and purposes were con- 
fined altogether to these two branches of the revenue, 
and that such a thing as a scheme for a general excise 
had never entered into his head, "nor, for what I know, 
into the head of any man I am acquainted with." There 
was in the mind of the English people then a vague hor- 
ror of all excise laws and excise officers, and the whole op- 
position to W'alpole's scheme in and out of the House of 
Commons was maintained by an appeal to that common 
feeling. Walpole's resolutions with regard to the tobac- 
co trade were taken first and separately. It will soon be 
seen that the resolutions concerning the duties on wine 
were destined never to be discussed at all. What Wal- 
pole proposed to do in regard to tobacco was to make the 
customs duty very small and to increase the excise duty; 
to establish bonded warehouses for the storing of the to- 
bacco imported into this country and meant to be export- 
ed again or sold here for home consumption ; thus to en- 
courage and facilitate the importation; to get rid of many 
of the dishonest practices which injured- the fair dealer 
and defrauded the revenue; to put a stop to smuggling; 
to benefit at once the grower, the manufacturer, the con- 
sumer, and the revenue. We need not relate at great 
length and in minute detail the history of these resolu- 
tions and of the debates on them in the House of Com- 
mons. But it may be pointed out that, wild and absurd 
as were the outcries of the Patriots, there yet was good 
reason for their apprehension of a growing scheme to sub- 
stitute excise for land-tax or poll-tax or customs. Wal- 
pole was, as we know, a firm believer in the advantages of 
indirect taxation, and of the introduction, as freely as pos- 
sible, of all raw materials for manufacture, and all articles 
useful for the food of a nation. He was a free-trader be- 
fore his time, and he saw that in certain cases there was 
immense advantage to the consumer and to the revenue 
in allowing articles to be imported under as light a duty 
as possible, and then putting an excise duty on their dis- 
tribution here. Walpole was perfectly right in all this, 
but his enemies were none the less justified in proclaiming 
that the proposals he was introducing could not end in a 
mere readjustment of the tobacco and wine duties. 

Walpole's first resolution was carried by 266 votes 
against 205. The Government had won a victory, but it 
was such a victory as Walpole did not care to win. He 
had been used of late to bear down all before him, and he 
saw with eyes of clear foreboding the ominous signif- 
icance of his present majority. He knew well that the 
Opposition had got the most telling cry they could possi- 
bly have sought or found against him. He knew that 
popular tumult would grow from day to day. He knew 
that his enemies were unscrupulous, and that they were 
banded together against him on many grounds and with 
many different purposes. Every section of the nation 
which had any hostile feeling to the House of Hano- 
ver, to the existing administration, or to the Prime-min- 
ister himself, made common cause against, not his Excise 
Bill, but him. The tobacco resolutions were passed, and 
a bill to put them into execution was ordered to be pre- 
pared. On April 4th the Bill was introduced to the 
House of Commons, and a motion was made that it be 
read a first time. Much, however, had happened out- 
of-doors since the day when Walpole introduced his 
resolutions. Even at that time there was a great ex- 
citement abroad, which brought crowds of more or less 



A HISTORY OF THE FOUR GEORGES. 






tumultuous persons round the entrances of the House of 
Commons. The troops had to be kept in readiness for 
any emergency that might arise. The least thing feared 
was that they might have to be employed to keep the ac- 
cess to the House clear for its members. By the time 
the first division had taken place, the tide of popular pas- 
sion had swollen still higher. As Walpole was quitting 
the House a furious rush was made at him, and but that 
some of his colleagues surrounded, protected, and bore 
him off, he would have been in serious personal danger. 
But the interval between that event and the introduction 
of the Bill had been turned to very practical account by 
those who were agitating against him, and the country 
was now in a flame of excitement. The Craftsman 
and the pamphleteers had done their work well. The 
most extravagant consequences were described as certain 
to follow from the adoption of Walpole's excise scheme. 
A minister once allowed to impose his excise duty upon 
wine and tobacco, and — thus shrieked the mouths of a 
hundred pamphleteers and verse-mongers — he will go on 
imposing excise on every article of food and dress and 
household use. Nothing will be able to resist the inquis- 
itorial exciseman. It was positively asserted in ballad 
and in pamphlet that before long the exciseman would 
everywhere practise on the daughters of England the 
atrociously insulting test which was attempted on Wat 
Tyler's daughter, and which brought about Wat Tyler's 
insurrection. The memories of Wat Tyler and of Jack 
Straw were invoked to arouse popular panic and fury. 
Strange as it may now seem, these appeals were success- 
ful in their object ; they did create a popular panic, and 
stir up popular passion and fury to the uttermost height. 
Not even Walpole attempted any longer to argue down 
the monstrous misrepresentations of his policy. The fury 
against him and his excise scheme grew hotter every day, 
and at one time it was positively thought that his life 
was in danger. Tumultuous crowds of people gathered 
in and around all the approaches to the House of Com- 
mons. Several members of the House who were known 
to be in favor of the Ministerial scheme complained that 
they had been menaced, insulted, and even assaulted ; and 
the House had for the security of its own debates, and the 
personal safety of its own 'members, to pass resolutions 
declaring that this riotous behavior was destructive of 
the freedom and constitution of Parliament, and a high 
crime and misdemeanor. In the House itself certain 
tactics, with which Parliament has been very familiar 
at a later period, were tried with some effect. Various 
motions for adjournment and other such delay to the 
progress of the Bill were made and pressed to a division. 
It was becoming evident to every one that the measure 
was doomed, and the hearts of the leaders of Opposition 
rose with each hour that passed, while the spirits of the 
Ministerialists fell. 

Walpole never lost his head, although he well knew 
that a certain and a damaging failure was now await- 
ing him. He still proclaimed that his measure could be 
hurtful to none but smugglers and unfair traders, that it 
would be of great benefit to the revenue and the nation, 
that it would tend " to make London a free port, and by 
consequence the market of the world." He spoke with 
scorn of the riotous crowds whom some had declared to 



be merely respectful petitioners. " Gentlemen may give 
them what name they think fit ; it may be said that they 
came hither as humble suppliants, but I know whom the 
law calls sturdy beggars." The Common Council of 
London, spirited on by a Jacobite Lord Mayor, petitioned 
against the excise scheme, and its example was followed 
by various municipalities in the kingdom. Walpole acted 
at last according to the principle which always governed 
him at such a crisis. He had the courage to abandon 
the ground which he had taken up, and which he would 
have been well entitled to maintain if argument could 
prevail over misrepresentation and passion. With that 
cool contempt for the extravagance and the ignorance 
of the sentiment which thwarted him, he abandoned his 
scheme and let the mob have its way. On Wednesday, 
April 1], 1733, it was made known that the Government 
did not intend to go any farther with the Bill. Exulta- 
tion all over the island was unbounded. Church bells 
rang, windows were illumined, bonfires blazed, multitudes 
shouted everywhere. If England had gained some splen- 
did victory over a combination of foreign enemies, there 
could not have been a greater display of frantic national 
enthusiasm than that which broke out when it was found 
that hostile clamor had prevailed against the Minister, 
and that his excise scheme was abandoned. 

Frederick the Great has enriched the curiosities of his- 
tory with an account which he gives of the abandonment 
of the Bill. According to him, George the Second had 
devised the measure as a means of making himself abso- 
lute sovereign of England. The Excise Bill was intended 
to put him in possession of a revenue fixed and assured, 
a revenue large enough to allow him to increase his mili- 
tary power to any strength he pleased. It only needed 
a word of command and a chief for revolution to break 
out. Walpole escaped from Parliament covered with an 
old cloak, and shouting with all his might, " Liberty, lib- 
erty ! no excise !" Thus disguised, he managed to get 
to the King in St. James's Palace. He found the King 
preparing for the worst, arming himself at all points, 
having put on the hat he wore at Malplaquet, and try- 
ing the temper of the sword he carried at Oudenarde. 
George desired to put himself at once at the head of his 
guards, and try conclusions with his enemies. Walpole 
had all the trouble in the world to moderate his sover- 
eign's impetuosity, and at length represented to him, 
" with the generous hardihood of an Englishman at- 
tached to his master," that it was only a choice between 
abandoning the Excise Bill and losing the crown. Where- 
upon George at last gave way ; the Bill was abandoned, 
and the crown preserved. 

This scene is, of course, a piece of the purest romance. 
But it is certain that the passions of the people were so 
thoroughly aroused that a man less cool and in the true 
sense courageous than Walpole might have provoked a 
popular outbreak, and no one can say whether the crown 
of the Brunswicks might not have gone down in a popu- 
lar outbreak just then. Time and education have long 
since vindicated Walpole's financial principles ; but the 
passion, the ignorance, and the partisanship of his own 
day were too strong, aud prevailed against him. 

END OF PART I. 



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Its SERIAL NOVELS are the best published, and its SHORT STORIES are un- 
surpassed. 

In CIRCULATION, in America and abroad, it leads cdl other periodicals of its class. 

Read the following opinions of the press, and you will see that America and Europe 
unite in pronouncing Harper's Magazine to be the GIANT OF THE MONTHLIES. 



Harper's Magazine ranks first in the world in circulation. 
Its history is a large part of the literary history of the nine- 
teenth century in America. — N. Y. Journal of Commerce. 

Always justifies its transcendent popularity. — N. Y. World. 

What must strike the most careless observer of the Maga- 
zine, however, are the truly beautiful woodcuts with which it 
is plentifully adorned. Impressed on carefully prepared pa- 
per, they have all the effect of finely executed steel engrav- 
ings, without losing the richness of first-rate wood-engraving. 
— St. James's Gazette, London. 

Illustrated with a fulness and beauty only beginning to be 
known in England. — Ayr [Scotland] Observer. 

The Magazine has made so much of geography, voyage, 
and travel, so many countries have been illustrated and de- 
scribed, with so many arts and sciences, that the work has 
become an encyclopaedia, and in the same space it would be 
hard to find so much material in such an attractive form. — 
Observer, N. Y. 

In Harper's Magazine we have the best literary and artis- 
tic talent of the world. — Chicago Times. 

To praise the illustrations of this admirable periodical is 
to paint the lily ; they must be seen to be appreciated. Pic- 
turesque scenes abroad and at home, graphically treated, are 
sandwiched in among fascinating historical, scientific, and so- 
cial articles, fiction, and poetry, contributed by the foremost 
writers of two continents. — N. Y. Star. 

Deserves its remarkable popularity and success. — Christian 
at Work, N.Y. 

Its charms increase with age. — Brooklyn Eagle. 



A mine of artistic beauty as well as of literary wealth. — 
The Lady's Pictorial, London. 

The engravings are produced with that care and artistic 
skill which has placed American wood-engraving at the head 
of the art. — Pictorial World, London. 

Good wine needs no bush, and Harper's Magazine needs 
no praise. — The Churchman, N. Y. 

It is so pretty, so big, and so cheap. — Edinburgh Daily 
Revieiv. 

Always welcome, always cheerful, and withal always ready 
to bestow somewhat of wisdom and cheerfulness among the 
people. — New Haven Palladium. 

The Harpers have a way of keeping their Magazine one 
of perennial interest, and it has been the repository of soma 
of the brightest literary work of the past twenty-five years. — 
Hartford Post. 

Combining choice literature of both nations. — Nonconform- 
ist, London. 

Its long life is to be ascribed to its sustained merit. Ri- 
vals have been born and died by its side. Others have taken 
their places, and have achieved wonderful success, but Har- 
per's continues to demonstrate its right and resolve to live 
and flourish. — Presbyterian, St. Louis. 

Harper's ought to be a welcome guest at every fireside ; 
bringing intelligence and culture, the practical and the {es- 
thetic, with every monthly visit. — Zion's Herald, Boston. 

Harper's engravings are of the best, and there are no bet- 
ter artists in the country than are seen in its pages. — Balti- 
more Sun. 



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